S<^ r< V, 



fi 






^/ 


-....^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




DQQQlE5a^b5# 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. I 



i 



liai! 



^t> 



^ 



l^opgriglii I' 



^/c 



V 



G6 



UNITED STATES UF AMEKICA ^ 













lij^^;* 


f# 


■" .;'•' ■■": ■ 1-' ■i:""; >■;•.■ 


•^.■.' "i' 


•-:V;^'-^;^',^^^^^^;'' 


■/ ■ '-1 '■ ?.' ■' 






, ''. - '■■J'.- ' •'»-•■ "•' ■'■■"■i 


. ■ 'l.'.-J ' 


i \ ■/' ,7'".- -■■ • 


^•t - \ 1 ■ 


■ 7- !;■'•-.'''■ «'vt. 




'-,'. .''. ." "^' ',■: ;'/<v'~"' 


:- ; ■ " r ' 


-. ^^^ ;-:".V''>l ' ■'■?,■■■ 


'• >v->f 


■--: *: •. .:■•■ ^i 


v.'l-'U 


r .. ./ ■/;•. ■< ;' ,■•:.•. 




' : ^•>-■■^ij^ ■^. ■:• .- 






-■' *•."-' .■ 


■ -':;\n ->•'■'-■-'■,■- - 




- ■ - : :;v^' ■ %^- 


^ ^^ 













LAroSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, 



AS APPLIED TO THB 



WANTS OF THE WEST; 



WITH AN ESSAY ON 



Forest Planting on the Great Plains, 



BY H, W. S.'^LEVELAND, 

Landscape Architect. 



Ae 



CHICAGO: / 
JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 

1873. 



.^\ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



'{cMjCficc/ 



PREFACE. 



The term " Landscape Architecture " is objectionable, as being 
only figuratively expressive of the art it is used to designate. I 
make use of it, under protest, as the readiest means of making myself 
understood, in the absence of a more appropriate term. 

If the art is ever developed to the extent I believe to be within 
its legitimate limits, it will achieve for itself a name worthy of its 
position. Until it does so, it is idle to attempt to exalt it in the 
world's estimation, by giving it a high - sounding title. My object in 
these few pages is simply to show that, by whatever name it may be 
called, the subdivision and arrangement of land for the occupation 
of civilized men, is an art demanding the exercise of ingenuity, 
judgment and taste, and one which nearly concerns the interests of 
real estate proprietors, and the welfare and happiness of all future 
occupants. 

A considerable portion of the " Essay on Forest Planting on the 
Great Plains," is made up from articles I have contributed from time 
to time to agricultural and scientific papers. All the correspondence, 
memoranda, etc., which I had collected on the subject for two years, 
during which I was engaged in its investigation, were destroyed in 
the great fire of October g, 1871. The present essay has been pre- 
pared from recollection, with the aid of some of my previously pub- 
lished articles which had been preserved by friends, together with 
liberal quotations, bearing upon the subject, from reliable authors. 

H. W. S. CLEVELAND. 
Chicago, Jan., 1873. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 

Inadequate ideas of the scope of Landscape Architecture — Its 
true definition __ il 

CHAPTER II. 

Illustration of the meaning of Landscape Architecture as applied 
to a private estate i8 

CHAPTER III. 

Landscape Architecture applied to the arrangement of towns — 
Duties and responsibilities incident to the work — Rectangular 
arrangement objectionable even on level sites — Illustrated by 
reference to Chicago 28 

CHAPTER IV. 

Advantages to be secured by timely forethought — Injurious results 
of rectangular arrangement on an irregular surface — Suburban 
additions _ - — 46 

CHAPTER V. 

City parks — Lessons of the Central Park — Difficulty of selecting 
a site for a park — Method of relief — Advantages of a plan — 
Proper management of street planting ._ 61 

CHAPTER VI. 

Importance of the work we have to do in preparing the new 
country for civilized habitation — Landscape Architecture the 
art which lies at its foundation 73 



PART II. 
Forest Planting on the Great Plains — - 93 




LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



CHAPTER I. 

INADEQUATE IDEAS OF THE SCOPE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHI- 
TECTURE ITS TRUE DEFINITION. 

HE appearance of Downing's "Landscape Gar- 
dening," about thirty-five years ago, conveyed 
to a large portion of the American public the 
first intimation of the existence of an art, having distinct 
principles and laws of its own, and dealing solely with 
the problems involved in the tasteful arrangement of 
public or private grounds. 

Before the introduction of railroads, the luxury of a 
country residence for men engaged in active business in 
the city, was necessarily confined to so small a portion of 
the population, that no general interest was felt in the 
subject of the arrangement of grounds, and the demand 
for the services of an educated landscape gardener was 
too limited to warrant the adoption of the profession as a 
means of support. With the facilities of locomotion 
afforded by steam transport, came the demand for the 
luxury of a rural home, and every city began sending 
out suburban colonies along the lines thus rendered 
accessible. ' 



12 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

The new colonists had, however, for the most part, 
little knowledge of country life, and no conception even 
of the existence of governing principles for the arrange- 
ment of grounds, the grouping of trees to secure tasteful 
effects of shape and color, or the artistic development of 
naturally beautiful or picturesque features to attain a 
realization of the landscape painter's dreams. 

To the large class who found themselves thus situated, 
delighted to escape from the restraints and the turmoil and 
dirt of the city, and eager to secure the utmost possible 
enjoyment from the new sources thus opened to them, yet 
feeling continually oppressed with the sense of their own 
ignorance and inexperience, Downing's book came like a 
new revelation, and attained at once a degree of success 
which was due alike to the admirable character of the 
work itself and to the fact of its appearing just in time to 
meet a great popular want. 

Nothing like it had previously appeared in this coun- 
try, and so few persons had any knowledge of foreign 
works on the subject, that his skillful adaptation of the 
principles of the art to our means, necessities and oppor- 
tunities, had all the zest and freshness of original matter. 

Since then the demand and supply have gone on 
annually increasing, till city and country have become so 
merged that it is hard to say where one ends and the 
other begins. The radius of available territory for sub- 
urban homes has extended with the opening of new 
roads, branches and lines of horse cars. Companies 
have made a lucrative business of buying attractive sites 
of comparatively wild land and arranging them tastefully 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 13 

as suburban additions, finding ready sales for lots at 
prices which pay a fair profit on the cost of improvement. 
Everywhere the demand has proved how readily the 
popular heart responds to the opportunity, and the revo- 
lution which has been effected in the condition of the 
country surrounding every large city affords sufficient 
evidence of the innate love of nature, and the longing to 
secure the enjoyment of her attractions, which pervades 
the popular heart. 

As a natural consequence, books and treatises upon 
landscape gardening and rural art, have multiplied till they 
have became an important branch of literature. Vol- 
umes and pamphlets of all sorts and sizes; original works, 
compilations, republications, and essays in the pages of 
horticultural journals have flowed from the press, till it 
would seem that no farther elucidation of the subject was 
required, or could be conveyed through the medium of 
publication; yet after twenty years experience as a pro- 
fessional landscape gardener, I am continually impressed 
with the inadequate conception of the scope of the art, 
which generally prevails, and I am convinced that the 
popular writers on the subject are largely responsible for 
the general ignorance. Not that they have failed to 
explain lucidly, and often in charming style, the esthetic 
principles of the art, and the management of the almost 
endless variety of combinations of natural and artificial 
decorations, whose tasteful introduction may often add 
very essentially to the beauty and interest of a country 
home ; but that they have confined themselves so exclu- 
sively to such, details that the idea has became almost 



14 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

universal that landscape gardening is solely a decorative 
art, the duties of which are comprised in the grouping 
of trees to secure the best effects of form and color, the 
disposition of wood, lawn and water, to form an artistic 
landscape, and the arrangement of all the details of orna- 
ment, such as flower beds, shrubbery, rustic work, foun- 
tains, waterfalls, etc., for the purpose of rendering the 
place attractive. 

The evidences of this are continually brought home to 
me in the practice of my profession. 

A man calls upon me for advice in regard to the 
arrangement of his grounds, and tells me he has built his 
house and made various improvements by grading and 
clearing, and now wants me to tell him how to finish it 
off. On visiting his place I find, perhaps, that he has 
placed his house in a position which may subject him to 
inconveniences which had never occurred to him, or that 
he might have secured advantages by placing it elsewhere 
which are impossible where it is. He has expended a 
large sum in grubbing up what he calls underbrush, and 
has thus destroyed the beauty of a natural wood, which 
now consists only of a collection of gaunt, naked looking 
stems of trees with mere tufts of foliage on their tops, 
which by no possibility can ever be made attractive either 
as individuals or groups. Elsewhere he has attempted 
to improve the grade by cutting down a hill which marred 
the even slope of the ground, but has succeeded only in 
giving it a formal look of cheerless discomfort. This he 
perceives, but instead of suspecting that it may be the 
result of his own mistakes, he only imagines it to be for 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 15 

the want of what remains to be done, which he expects 
me to direct. In other words, after destroying the natural 
beauty of the place, he looks to me to make it attractive 
by the introduction of artificial decorations, and not 
unfrequently he proceeds to give me directions as to the 
kind of ornaments he would like, and where and how they 
are to be bestowed ; a fountain garishly displayed for the 
admiration of every wayfarer on the street ; a rustic arbor 
or seat, not where any one would ever be tempted to 
make use of it, but where it may most conspicuously pro- 
claim that this is the abode of rural felicity ; flower beds, 
rock-work, serpentine walks, all to be arranged with the 
same obvious purpose of display; the idea throughout 
being that the place must be dressed up to look pretty, 
that the landscape gardener's duty is simply to arrange 
the dressing, and the test of his skill consists in making 
the most elaborate display of such baby-house furniture 
as the owner is willing to pay for. The proportion of 
those who have applied to me to arrange their grounds 
from the outset, fixing the positions of the buildings, and 
adapting the various subdivisions to the natural features 
of the place, so as to secure the utmost convenience, with 
the best possible development of graceful or picturesque 
effect, is insignificant in comparison with those who have 
sent for me after all these essential characteristics had 
been established beyond recall, and desired me to give 
the finishing touches which were to confer the crowning 
charm of attractive interest. 

That writers on landscape gardening in this country 
have heretofore failed to give prominence to the really 



l6 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

essential principles which lie at the foundation of the art, 
may be accounted for by the fact that they have supposed 
themselves to be addressing a class of readers inhabiting 
districts already brought to a condition of elaborate cult- 
ure, and who would therefore be mainly interested in 
details of decoration. It is obvious that the new regions 
of the West require a vast amount of preliminary prepar- 
ation before much attention can be paid to mere extran- 
eous ornament. My object is to show not only that this 
preparatory work is justly the province of the landscape 
gardener, but that it is in reality the essentially important 
part of his art which gives character and expression to 
the whole, independently of mere decorations, which may 
or may not be in good taste, according as they correspond 
with the expression thus conferred. Yet the idea so 
generally prevails that the landscape gardener has no 
concern with these preliminary works, that I was repeat- 
edly told when I first thought of establishing myself in 
the West, that I need not hope to succeed ; that people 
were too much occupied in the great work of developing 
the resources of a new country to have time or means to 
devote to artistic display, and that the most I could hope 
for would be an occasional call to lay out some rich 
man's garden near the city, and for that I should probably 
be indebted to the ladies of the family. 

Perceiving that these opinions were based upon an 
entire misconception of the scope of the art, whose prin- 
ciples I conceived to lie at the foundation of all improve- 
ments of land, my first efforts were directed to making 
known through the public press, and otherwise, as oppor- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 17 

tunity offered, the true definition of the term, which may 
be expressed in a condensed form as follows : 

Landscape Gardening, or more properly Landscape Archi- 
tecture, is the art of arranging land so as to adapt it most 
conveniently, econoi7iically and graceftdly, to any of the varied 
wants of civilization. 

For whatever success I have met with in securing 
employment since coming to the West (which I gratefully 
acknowledge to have been far beyond my expectations), 
I feel that I have been mainly indebted to the persistent 
urging of this truth, and the conviction it has carried to 
the minds of those interested in the great real estate 
operations of the West, that it is the original design of 
arrangement which confers upon any place its intrinsic 
expression or character of beauty or picturesqueness, the 
want of which cannot be atoned for by any amount of 
subsequent dressing or decoration. 

My object in the following pages is to prove the truth 
of the above definition by familiar illustrations, and set 
forth the extent and importance of its application to the 
wants of the West. I am not aware that any writer 
has ever attempted to apply the principles of the art, on 
the scale which I believe to be required to meet the 
demands which devolve upon us, yet I am confident that 
no one will deny that it involves issues of vital moment 
to the future of our country which deserve timely con- 
sideration. 



1 8 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



CHAPTER II. 

ILLUSTRATION OF THE MEANING OF LANDSCAPE ARCHI- 
TECTURE AS APPLIED TO A PRIVATE ESTATE. 




N order to make my meaning clear, I propose 
first to show what constitutes landscape archi- 
tecture in the arrangement of a private estate, 
and then to illustrate the application of the same princi- 
ples to larger areas. 

Inexperienced persons continually deceive themselves 
with the idea that no art is required in the arrangement 
of ground for the ordinary purposes of domestic use as a 
family residence, beyond the exercise of intuitive skill and 
ingenuity, and almost every man imagines, till he tries, 
that he can do it to suit himself much better than 
another can do it for him, and many a one pays dearly 
for the experience which convinces him of his error. 

In selecting a building site ; in arranging the relative 
positions of the buildings to each other, and to the objects 
for which they are designed ; in making such disposition 
of the different departments as will best facilitate the 
convenient and economical performance of the objects of 
use or pleasure to which they are devoted, taking advan- 
tage of natural features whenever they are available to 
save otherwise unavoidable outlay ; having due regard to 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 19 

necessities of drainage, or other possible provision for 
health or comfort, to say nothing of possible future wants 
to which reference should be had, many problems are 
involved, the satisfactory solution of which demands the 
discipline of study and experience. Objects of utility 
or convenience may often be secured by availing one's 
self of natural advantages, which it would require a large 
outlay to attain by artificial means. Present or future 
wants may occur to the mind of one who has had the ad- 
vantage of experience which might not suggest themselves 
to a novice, and a professional man might find means of 
providing for such wants which an inexperienced person 
would never think of. All these things are comprised in 
the essential duties of the landscape architect, independ- 
ently of the artistic skill which enables him to preserve a 
unity of design throughout, and thus to give an expression 
of grace and beauty to the whole by the harmonious blend- 
ing of its parts. The point I wish especially to impress 
upon the reader is that this primary work is what really 
confers character upon the place. Decorations of what- 
ever kind may be subsequently added, and if tastefully 
and appropriately introduced, may tend to heighten the 
effect, or increase the attractive interest which pertains to 
the whole, but in no case can they render a place beautiful 
which is not intrinsically so, or atone for awkwardness, 
inconvenience or incongruity in the general arrangement, 
and moreover it is by no means impossible that elaborate 
ornamentation should destroy or seriously detract from 
the general expression otherwise conveyed, as for instance 
by conferring an air of ostentatious display upon an other- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



wise pleasant and attractive home, or detracting from the 
dignity of an imposing situation, by diverting the atten- 
tion from the sublime or beautiful natural features, which 
are sufficient in themselves to excite admiration and 
occupy the attention. 

In selecting the position for a house, which is to 
become a family homestead, on an estate comprising the 
usual variety of rural scenery, in the form of hills, valleys, 
wood, water, etc., either within or immediately adjacent 
to its own limits, it should be remembered that the imme- 
diate wants of its first occupants comprise but a single 
link in the chain of circumstances, which should be taken 
into consideration before making the final decision. The 
building about to be erected may outlast several genera- 
tions of occupants, and it would prove a source of con- 
stant annoyance to discover, when too late, that an error 
had been made in its position, involving disagreeable con- 
sequences which might have been avoided, or failing to 
secure advantages which another situation would have 
afforded. 

Such mistakes are very common, and a consideration 
of some of the questions involved will show that the 
probability of their occurrence is very great. 

If any considerable elevation, commanding an extended 
prospect, is included in the area, the first impulse of an 
inexperienced person will be to select the summit as the 
most desirable site for the residence. The importance of 
securing such a view from the windows, as conducive to 
the happiness of the daily life of the occupants is apt to 
be over-rated in the enthusiasm excited by its first con- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 21 

templation. Most people become indifferent to it, when 
its novelty is destroyed by daily habit, whereas the 
annoyances attending the access to an elevated position, 
which at first seemed a cheap price for the treasure to be 
secured, are never diminished by repetition. The neces- 
sity of climbing the hill at every return to the house, in 
all conditions of weather, through rain and sleet, and icy 
winds and broiling sun ; whatever the condition of roads, 
mud or dust, ice or slush; under all circumstances of 
health and temper; suffering with a headache which makes 
life a burden ; harassed with petty vexations, or hurried by 
unexpected necessities which no man escapes, renders it 
after a time so serious an evil that only the utter hopeless- 
ness of relief constrains the sufferers to submit in silence. 
Better by far to select a less commanding position for 
the house, reserving the summit as an objective point for 
an evening stroll, when weather and disposition are favor- 
able, under which circumstances the extended view will 
never fail to be appreciated and enjoyed. As a matter 
of taste also in securing the most agreeable aspect of the 
place from points of approach, the summit of a hill should 
be avoided as a building site, since a house thus situated 
has always a bleak, exposed look, especially if seen in 
whole or partial relief against the sky, whereas if the land 
rises in the rear of the house, the summit crowned with 
wood, and in front assumes the form of a gently sloping 
lawn, with groups of trees tastefully arranged to prevent 
the appearance of bareness, the effect will be to give a 
home-like and attractive expression, which every person 
of good taste will recognize with pleasure. 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



It is moreover not unfrequently the case that more 
attractive though less expansive views can be obtained 
from the lower point, by arranging plantations of trees or 
shrubbery so as to conceal offensive objects, and direct 
the eye to graceful or picturesque bits of landscape which 
are varied as the position is changed, and thus rendered 
more interesting than when seen in the single prospect 
from the summit which embraces them all. 

It is not improbable that other and more serious objec- 
tions may be urged against the supposed site than have 
yet been stated. The importance of reserving abundant 
room in the rear of the house for domestic convenience 
and pleasure, secluded from public sight, can hardly be 
over-estimated as an element of daily comfort, and if in 
order to secure the fine view, the house is placed upon 
the apex of a hill, — the ground sloping to the road in 
front so as to be fully exposed to view, and falling off in 
the rear also, so rapidly as to leave no room for domestic 
offices, wood yard, laundry yard, play ground, garden, etc., 
shut out from public gaze and amply large for all the 
demands of the family — the continual sense of discom- 
fort and inconvenience resulting from the want will far 
outbalance the advantages gained. The position of the 
stable, both as regards its own requirements and in refer- 
ence to the house, is a matter of essential importance. 
It should be convenient of access, yet not so near as to 
be in any way offensive; not prominently conspicuous, 
though I do not consider it an objectionable feature if 
unobtrusive, and it is all important that it should be 
capable of approach by a farm lane, instead of being 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 23 

solely accessible by the carriage drive past the front door. 
Advantage may often be taken of a side hill to economize 
construction by means of a basement in which the cow- 
stalls may be constructed, with a large sliding door open- 
ing on the barn yard at a lower level than the stable and 
carriage house, and thus out of sight from the house. 
Much of the essential interest and pleasure derivable 
from whatever attractions the place may possess, is 
dependent upon so placing the house that the windows 
of the rooms which will be most occupied may command 
the most desirable views, and to this end it is of vital 
importance that the architect and the landscape gar- 
dener should act in concert, otherwise the portions of the 
grounds which possess the best capacity of tasteful 
development may be overlooked by the kitchen windows, 
while the parlors may command only a cheerless outlook 
upon the road. Architects would no doubt be more 
ready to join in consultation with landscape gardeners, if 
the latter were as a class more conscious of the duties 
and responsibilities of their profession, and better able to 
fulfil them. The question of an easy and graceful 
entrance drive by which the house may be approached 
from the road, and easy access to the stable must of 
course be taken into consideration in determining their 
relative positions, and also the subdivision of the land 
into useful and ornamental departments, of garden, 
orchard, lawn, wood, etc. And, finally, the arrangement 
of the plantations of trees and shrubbery requires the 
exercise of a degree of skill and taste which are never 
attained without study and experience. It is generally at 



24 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

this stage that the proprietor becomes conscious of his 
own deficiency and seeks the aid of a landscape gardener. 
Tree planting is the first positive step in the work of 
redemption from the cheerless condition to which the 
place has been reduced, and if the owner has attained a 
conception of the possibility of a more graceful arrange- 
ment than that of formal rows, and attempts the arrange- 
ment of groups and irregular belts, he speedily becomes 
aware that he is going beyond his depth, and is fain to call 
for aid. He cannot satisfy himself in regard to their posi- 
tions, and is utterly at a loss when he tries to imagine 
what will be the effect when they have attained their full 
size. Of their relative size, form and colour of foliage he 
has probably no idea, and if he attempts to stake out the 
ground for the planting of a group, it is probable that he 
will set the stakes within five or six feet of each other, 
and label them with the names of such trees as he has 
bought of a travelling agent, who has assured him of their 
desirable characteristics. He soon becomes sensible of a 
perverse tendency of the stakes, in spite of every effort on 
his part, to assume a formal character in their relative 
positions, which is very inexplicable. His determination 
was to stick them in as irregularly as possible, and he 
finds on looking them over that he can see squares, and 
triangles, and straight rows and quincunx figures contin- 
ually repeated. And perhaps in the midst of his work he 
happens to cast his eyes into an adjoining meadow 
upon an elm which has been growing in undisturbed 
beauty for a century, and the thought flashes across his 
mind that he has been for an hour labelling stakes and 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 25 

Sticking them in the ground as guides for the planting of 
elms, maples, ash trees, pines, hemlocks, and cedars, and 
there before him is a single elm covering in the spread 
of its branches a larger space than he has devoted to the 
whole group. The truth flashes upon him that he is 
working at a trade at which he has never served an 
apprenticeship, and he speedily arrives at the conclusion 
that it will be safer and cheaper to seek the aid of one 
who has learned the business. 

Let me not be understood to say that there are not 
frequent instances of the exercise of the highest degree of 
skill and taste as evinced in the results of the work of 
amateurs who have had no professional training. To 
one such I am indebted for some of the most valuable 
lessons I have ever learned, but it is worthy of note that 
such men are ever the readiest to seek the aid of compe- 
tent professional authorities, while inexperienced men 
will proceed without hesitation and commit the grossest 
blunders with a blind confidence that nobody can instruct 
them. On the other hand it cannot be denied that many 
of the so-called landscape gardeners are men whose prac- 
tical knowledge is not governed by an innate taste, and 
whose pedantry and arrogance is the result of their ignor- 
ance on all other subjects. A little experience with one 
of this class is apt to prove so offensive that a man 
possessed of ordinary sensibility becomes disgusted, and 
prefers falling back on his own common sense, and work- 
ing out the problem for himself with such aid as he may 
incidentally secure. 

It will, I trust, be evident that this primary work of 



26 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

arrangement which I have been describing is what really 
constitutes the "landscape architecture " of the place, to 
which all subsequent decoration is subordinate, and the 
skill and judgment of the artist are shown in the tasteful 
adaptation of the natural features to the necessities of the 
case, and the attainment of the most graceful develop- 
ment of whatever attractive features the place may 
possess, without any sacrifice of the obvious demands of 
convenience. If the reader will consider the endless 
variety of combinations of natural features upon which 
it is the artist's province to operate, and the equally 
varied tastes and necessities of humanity which are to be 
provided for, he may perhaps obtain a realizing sense of 
the demands which are made upon his taste and 
ingenuity. 

But apart from all considerations of the immediate 
wants of the proprietor is the necessity of reference to 
future possibilities. 

This question is one of special importance in the West 
and particularly in the vicinity of growing towns, where 
land is rapidly increasing in value. It often happens in 
a very few years that such a demand for building sites 
may arise as will make it desirable to divide the estate 
and set off a portion for the purpose of selling it in lots. 
Even if the original proprietor does not wish to do so, it 
may become imperatively necessary for his children or 
successors, and special reference should be had to such 
possibility in making the primary arrangement, and the 
buildings and different departments so disposed that those 
portions which it would be most desirable to set off may 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 27 

be separated from the rest by opening a new road or 
otherwise, without disturbing the unity of the original 
place, or affecting it disagreeably, except by reducing its 
area. The importance of this will be readily apparent, 
and the necessity of exercising judgment and ingenuity 
in view of it, hardly less so. On the other hand, and 
almost of equal importance, is the possibility of external 
changes which may affect the value of the place or the 
comfort of its occupants, as, the probability of new roads 
being opened in its vicinity, or of neighboring tracts 
being made use of for purposes which may affect it favor- 
ably or otherwise. It is obvious that such questions 
possess an importance in a new and rapidly growing 
country which does not pertain to them in an older 
region, and every design for the arrangement of any con- 
siderable area should have reference to them. 



28 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 




CHAPTER III. 

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE APPLIED TO THE ARRANGE- 
MENT OF TOWNS. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 

INCIDENT TO THE WORK. RECTANGULAR ARRANGE- 
MENT OBJECTIONABLE EVEN ON LEVEL SITES. 

ILLUSTRATED BY REFERENCE TO CHICAGO. 

F I have succeeded in showing that even in the 
arrangement of a private estate comprising only 
a few acres, there is abundant room for the exer- 
cise of practical knowledge and skill in the application of 
the principles of landscape architecture, no argument 
will be needed to prove that very much more intricate 
and elaborate problems must present themselves when 
the area is enlarged, and the tastes, interests and future 
wants of great multitudes are to be provided for in the 
laying out of a town or city. 

The existence of sanitary, economic and esthetic laws 
which should govern the arrangement of cities, is abun- 
dantly proved by the penalties which have so often been 
paid for their transgression. We cannot plead ignorance 
in excuse for their violation, and upon us more than any 
pre-existing nation devolves the duty of their further 
development and application. 

The opening of the lines of railroad across the conti- 
nent has developed so much that was unexpected in the 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 2-9 

resources and capacities of the regions they have pene- 
trated ; has dispelled so many erroneous ideas in regard 
to their susceptibility of improvement for the purposes of 
civilized habitation, and has so facilitated the means of 
adapting them to such purposes, that it has become a 
task of almost equal difficulty to obtain a realizing sense 
of the opportunities which are dawning upon us, or of the 
responsibilities they involve. 

The vast regions yet lying undisturbed between the 
Mississippi and the Pacific comprise such resources of 
wealth and variety of sublime and picturesque features 
of natural scenery as can be seen on no other portion of 
the earth's surface, that is accessible to civilization. This 
is the raw material which is placed in our hands to be 
moulded into shape for the habitations of a nation, and 
such as we create, it must essentially remain for all future 
time. All coming generations are to inhabit the cities 
and towns, and go to their daily labors in the streets, and 
seek recreation in the parks and pleasure grounds, and 
be laid to rest in the cemeteries, the foundations of which 
we are laying or preparing to lay, and whose essential 
features of arrangement are immutable from the time 
they are first occupied. 

It may not at first sight appear that the duties and 
responsibilities devolving upon us are materially different 
from those which have attached to the similar work in 
which our fathers have been engaged throughout our 
national existence. A little reflection, however, will show 
that the march of modern improvement has so altered 
the relative proportion of means to ends, that the appli- 



30 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

cation of the creative powers we now possess to the 
development of a new country, can no more be governed 
by the record of the past than the destructive agencies of 
modern warfare can be directed by the military tactics of 
a past age. 

Before the introduction of railroads the settlement of 
the West was by a gradual process of accretion, a van- 
guard of hardy pioneers keeping ever in advance, endur- 
ing hardships and privations which could only be borne 
by men unaccustomed to the ordinary comforts of civili- 
zation. The better classes who followed were necessarily 
governed to a greater or less extent in whatever further 
improvements they attempted, by the works of their pred- 
ecessors, and nothing approaching to scientific or artistic 
designs of arrangement of extended areas, based upon 
wise forethought of future necessities, was attempted. 
The Government system of surveys of public lands 
formed the only basis of division, the only guide in laying 
out county roads, or the streets of proposed towns ; and 
if the towns grew into cities it was simply by the indefi- 
nite extension of the straight streets, running north, south, 
east or west, without regard to topographical features, or 
facilities of grading or drainage, and still less of any con- 
siderations of taste or convenience, which would have 
suggested a different arrangement. Every Western trav- 
eler is familiar with the monotonous character of the 
towns resulting from the endless repetition of the dreary 
uniformity of rectangles which they present ; yet the 
custom is so universal and offers such advantages in sim- 
plifying and facilitating descriptions and transfers of real 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 31 

estate, that any attempt at the introduction of a different 
system encounters at once a strong feeling of popular 
prejudice. 

A new era in the process of the redemption and settle- 
ment of the wild country has now commenced, and a vast 
extent of new territory is annually opening to its advanc- 
ing waves. Wherever a railroad is opened, all the labor- 
saving machinery and all the comforts and luxuries of 
civilization are at once introduced, and the newest settle- 
ments are equipped from the outset with all the physical 
necessities of civilized life. 

The Eastern man who made the journey to the Missis- 
sippi thirty years ago found himself, after ten days or a 
fortnight's weary travelling by canal boat, stage and 
steamer, among a people differing in dress, habits and 
idiom, from those he had left; and if he departed from 
the great routes of travel and penetrated the interior of 
any of the Western States, he was forced to submit to 
inconvenience and discomfort for want of what he had 
always been accustomed to consider the simplest neces- 
sities of life, but whose names and uses were alike 
unknown to the majority of the primitive backwoodsmen 
who comprised the rural population. 

Now the passage to the Pacific may be made in less 
time than was then required to reach the Mississippi, and 
without the surrender of any of the luxuries which have 
come to be regarded as necessities of modern travel, and 
which in spite of the tendency to vulgar display in the 
upholstering of hotels and public conveyances, have done 
good service in cultivating and refining the manners and 



32 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

tastes of a large class, whose only knowledge of them is 
derived from such sources. The traveler may now look 
in vain for the distinctive evidences of a primitive condi- 
tion of social life. He will scarcely find even a log house, 
and nothing in the dress or appearance of the inhabitants 
or the furnishing of their dwellings will strike him as 
essenrially different from what he has been accustomed 
to in the older settlements. Towns no longer grow up 
imperceptibly and apparently by accident, but are created 
as it were in a day, the population and material being 
furnished to order and delivered by rail at any given 
point, where they fall into place and assume their respec- 
tive duties with almost the precision of military organ- 
ization. 

A striking illustrarion of the rapid conversion of the 
wilderness to an advanced condition of cultivation was 
exhibited at the last meering of the National Pomological 
Society. It seems but yesterday that the convention was 
held in New York, at which that society was first estab- 
lished, and many of those who took part on that occasion 
are still numbered among its active members. At that 
time Nebraska was only thought of as a part of the great 
American desert, which was supposed to be incapable of 
cultivation, and within whose limits it was hardly safe 
for civilized men to enter except in armed caravans or 
under military protection ; yet at the last meeting of the 
Pomological Society the prize for the largest and finest 
collection of fruit was awarded to Nebraska ! 

The change has been so rapid and so great that it 
cannot be fully realized except by those who can recall 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 7,^ 

the various stages of progress from its condition of savage 
dreariness to that of smiling culture. 

But in the arrangement of towns no advance has been 
made from the original rectangular fashion, which even 
when the site is level, is on many accounts objectionable 
while with every departure from an even surface, the 
advantages become apparent of adapting the arrangement 
of the streets to its inequalities. 

Every one who is familiar with the river towns of the 
West will recall innumerable instances of enormously 
expensive works in cutting down hillsides and building 
up embankments ; of the almost total destruction of valu- 
able building sites ; in one place by their being left in an 
inaccessible position on the top of a precipice ; in another 
by being exposed to all the drainage of a street which is 
far above them, while all the naturally beautiful or pic- 
turesque features of the place have been destroyed or 
rendered hideous in the effort to make them conform to 
a rectangular system, as if the human intellect were as 
powerless to adapt itself to changing circumstances as the 
instinct of insects, whose cells are constructed on an 
unvarying pattern. 

All these evil results might be obviated by due fore- 
thought and the exercise of judgment and taste in adapt- 
ing the arrangement to the site ; and now that we have 
reached the point when vast regions *may be controlled 
by companies or individuals, and the sites and plans of 
towns can be selected and pre-ordained, it is unworthy of 
the progress of the age in science and art that no advance 
should be made in a matter of such importance. 



34 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

If a town is to be laid out on any given tract of land, 
the first question in the mind of a landscape architect 
should be : How can the area be divided so as to secure 
the best disposition of the different departments whose 
necessities can be forseen and provided for ? 

How can the streets be best adapted to the natural 
shape of the ground, so as to economize cost of construc- 
tion, and attain ease of grade and facility of drainage, by 
taking advantage of the opportunities offered by nature 
to save expense of cutting and filling, while preserving 
the most desirable building sites in the best positions 
relative to the roads ? 

How can any naturally attractive features, such as a 
river, a lake or a mountain, near or distant, be made to 
minister to the beautiful or picturesque character of the 
place, by adapting the arrangement to the development 
of their most attractive aspects? 

Every one can see in the mere statement of these ques- 
tions, (which are but samples of many which will readily 
suggest themselves), that the answers must involve possi- 
bilities of vital moment in a sanitary, economic and 
esthetic sense, and although the answers may be only 
approximately and conjecturally correct, it by no means 
follows that there is no room for the exercise of judgment. 
To pretend that their conditions can be best filled by an 
invariable adherence to the rectangular system, is as ab- 
surd as would be the assertion that the convenience and 
economy and comfort of every family would be best 
secured by living in a square house, with square rooms, 
of a uniform size. The rectangular system has this in its 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, t,% 

favor, that the first cost of laying out is less than that of 
a more elaborate achitectural arrangement, because any 
surveyor can run out the lines, and morever, there is no 
way in which so many lots can be got out of a given area. 
By a parity of reasoning, square houses would cost less 
than more elaborate buildings, because any carpenter can 
build them, and they will cut up into rooms more 
economically than an irregular building. Yet people do 
not hesitate to pay large prices for elaborate architectural 
designs for buildings, which are to last at most for a few 
generations, while they suffer a town, which is to last 
forever, to grow up without an effort at adaptation to 
present circumstances or future necessities, while it is 
obvious in many cases that present economy involves 
enormous and irremediable future outlay or loss. The 
instances in which irreparable and inestimable evils have 
resulted from the violation of such principles of landscape 
architecture, as are indicated by the above questions, 
may be found in almost every city in the country, and 
the almost superhuman efforts which some of them 
are making to obtain relief, afford sufficient evidence 
of the importance of timely exercise of care for their 
prevention. 

It may not at first appear that any very serious objec- 
tion can be urged against the rectangular system when 
the site is a perfectly level one, but the consideration of 
a case in point, whose exceptions may serve as illustra- 
tions of the truth of the general rule, will prove that it 
involves the sacrifice of advantages whose value can 
hardly be estimated. 



36 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

Chicago is situated on a vast plain extending in every 
direction for many miles beyond the city limits. 

Probably no city ever had such an opportunity as hers 
to secure every possible advantage which the situation 
admits, by the exercise of judicious forethought in the 
preparation of a design adapted to the necessities which 
were certain to arise. Other cities have grown up by 
gradual accretion in a long series of years, but Chicago 
has grown from a mere village to an immense city in the 
course of a single generation, and many of her active and 
energetic citizens of to-day have shot wild game where 
now are located some of her busiest thoroughfares. Her 
founders were always sanguine of her future destiny, and 
from an early day declared their conviction that she 
would become one of leading commercial cities of the 
country. They had the history and example of all the 
cities of all the world to teach them the necessities, and 
warn them of the dangers which must arise, and which 
could never be rectified if not foreseen and provided for 
in the original design. The site was a dead level, offer- 
ing no natural features to affect the design, except the 
lake and the river, the former comprising the only object 
worthy of consideration for esthetic effect, while the latter 
furnished a secure harbor for lake craft, and must of 
course always be intimately connected with the business 
interests of the city. 

No evidence of special reference to these features 
appears in the original plan, and the only important pro- 
vision which indicates the faith of the founders in the 
future greatness of the city, is in the breadth of the 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 37 

Streets, which is generally from sixty-six to eighty feet, — 
a most important provision certainly, and one which is so 
often neglected, that it reflects credit upon the judgment 
of those who exercised such forethought. 

Within the present city limits are comprised about 
eight hundred miles of streets, and with the exception of 
ten or twelve whose course is diagonal to that of the 
general system, and only one of which comes within a 
mile of the central business portion of the city, all the 
streets run due north and south and east and west. The 
town having originally started on these lines, the great 
city has grown up by simple projections of the same, the 
diagonals being old country roads whose convenience was 
too well established to admit of their removal. Before 
going farther, it is worthy of remark that the arranging of 
the streets according to the cardinal points involves a 
sanitary objection of no mean import. No fact is better 
established than the necessity of sunlight to the highest 
degree of animal health, and no constitution can long 
endure, without ill effect, the habitual daily privation of 
its health giving power. City houses at best can rarely 
be so well provided for in this respect as those which 
stand alone, as is generally the case in the country, and 
it is all the more important that every facility should be 
afforded to secure as much as possible of its genial influ- 
ence. But every house on the south side of a street 
running east and west must have its front rooms, which 
are generally its living rooms, entirely secluded from the 
sun during the Winter, and for most of the day during 
the Summer. This fact, coupled with that of the indoor 



38 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

life of American, and particularly Western, women, is 
enough to account for a very large share of the nervous 
debility which so generally prevails. If the rectangular 
system must be adhered to in city arrangement, it would 
be far better that the lines of streets should be northwest 
and southeast, and the cross streets at right angles with 
them, than as now disposed. 

The present city limits embrace an area eight miles in 
length by five in breadth, and with the exception of the 
few diagonal streets above alluded to, the city is simply a 
vast collection of square blocks of buildings, divided by 
straight streets, whose weary lengths become fearfully 
monotonous to one who is under frequent necessity of 
traversing them. 

Here and there at wide distances from each other 
single squares have been reserved for public use, and in 
one or two of these squares an elaborate effort at decora- 
tion has been made by means of what is commonly 
understood to be landscape gardening. Mountain ranges 
are introduced which are overlooked from the chamber 
windows of the surrounding houses ; lakes of correspond- 
ing size are created apparently to afford an excuse for the 
construction of rustic bridges, which are conspicuous at a 
greater distance than either mountains or lakes. A light- 
house three feet high, on a rocky promontory the size of a 
dining room table, serves to warn the ducks and geese of 
hidden dangers of navigation, and this baby-house orna- 
mentation is tolerated in a great city which aspires to an 
artistic reputation ; the crowds which throng these places 
in pleasant weather give evidence alike of the popular 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 39 

longing for relief from the din and turmoil of the streets, 
and of the facility with which they might be made avail- 
able for purposes of instruction by a truly artistic use of 
objects of natural beauty and interest. 

A little area in the south part of the city, known as 
Ellis Park, is a pleasing exception to the general rule, 
making no such display of absurdities, and being beauti- 
fully kept and richly decorated with flowers tastefully 
arranged in masses set in a velvet sward. Few people, 
except those in the immediate vicinity, are aware that the 
city is indebted for the possession of this little gem to the 
enthusiasm of an amateur, who furnishes and watches 
over the flowers and provides for the wants of the trees 
and grass, and finds his reward in the gratification of his 
ruling passion and the consciousness of the pleasure he 
confers on others. 

The reservation of the area now occupied by Lincoln 
Park was the earliest and most judicious selection of land 
for the purpose of public recreation, and it will always 
possess a peculiar and superior value and interest from 
the facts of its vicinity and ease of access to the business 
portions of the city and its position on the shore of the 
lake, which is the only natural feature of the whole region 
around Chicago, which possesses any distinct characteris- 
tics of sublimity. These are in effect the same as those 
of the ocean, whether in the idea it conveys of grandeur 
by its vast extent, of terrific power when roused by storms, 
or of living, sparkling beauty in its ordinary condition 
when its rippling surface is dotted with fleets of sails and 
steamers. The shores possess none of the picturesque 



40 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

features which are essential to give the full' effect of sub- 
limity to an ocean view. There are no jutting headlands, 
no deep bays, no islands, or "cold, grey stones;" nothing 
in fact but an even line of sandy shore. The unbounded 
expanse of water, with its ever changing hues and moods, 
comprises in itself all that conveys the impression of 
grandeur, in which it is in no wise inferior to the ocean 
except in a single characteristic, and that is one which 
would only be observed by a practised eye. The heavy 
ground swell which is often seen in the ocean when no 
wind is blowing, and which is the result of storms so 
distant that no other evidence of them can be discovered 
is never seen in the lake. While its storms last, its 
breakers are as grand and terrific as those of the ocean, 
but the waves subside with the winds, and we never see, 
as on the ocean, a surface unrippled by a breath of air, 
but heaving with a solemn series of advancing waves 
which break upon the shore with a roar like thunder. 

The lake is the one single natural feature which 
Chicago can command which possesses intrinsic sublim- 
ity and unceasing interest. In arranging a park upon its 
borders, therefore, it should be the objective point of 
attractive interest, the development and exhibition of 
which it should be the study of the artist to secure under 
such variety of conditions as would tacitly acknowledge its 
supremacy. The shaping of the ground and the arrange- 
ment of the trees should have reference to this end, and 
the drives and walks should be so arranged as to open 
views of the lake from different points, giving continual 
variety by the different framing of hills or foliage through 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 41 

which it is seen, but making it always the essential object 
of the picture. Instead of this, the park is cut off from 
the lake by a low range of sandhills which must be 
crossed before it can be seen. No art whatever has been 
applied to give a picturesque effect by the use of such 
accessories as would excite emotions in keeping with the 
grandeur or the beauty of the scene. The visitor crosses 
the hill and the blank sheet of water lies before him in 
its full extent, and all at once. No previous glimpses of 
portions of it, seen through distant openings between the 
hills or under an archway of overhanging foliage, awakens 
curiosity and excites the imagination by the intricacy and 
variety thus afforded ; and indeed, so far as any pleasure 
is derivable from the view of the lake, the park offers no 
advantages over the wharves of the city. Yet with this 
magnificent sheet of water at hand to furnish the key 
note of whatever improvements might be attempted on 
its shores, the prominent decoration of the park is an 
elaborately artificial lake which seems to have been con- 
structed for the purpose of exhibiting a furthej: display of 
such childish toys as adorn the squares. More rustic 
bridges, a miniature castle, and a grotto of imitation stone 
adorned with colored glass, the effect of which when 
lighted up, as a Chicago paper gravely informed its read- 
ers, "is quite equal to that of the celebrated grotto in 
Wood's Museum!" 

To return, however, to the subject of rectangular 
arrangement, from which I have wandered. 

If one has occasion to cross any considerable portion 
of the city oTti a line diagonal to the uniform course 



42 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

of the streets ; that is : if he wishes to go from the north- 
east to the southwest part, or from the northwest to the 
southeast, he must of necessity travel nearly one third 
farther than would be necessary if he could take a straight 
course. The relief afforded by the few diagonal streets 
which exist is but partial, because they are not system- 
atically arranged to meet the necessities of the case, but 
they serve nevertheless to prove how valuable such a 
system would be, for they are always thronged, and the 
demand for business sites along their lines is far beyond 
that upon any of the streets in their vicinity. Except in 
the occasional instances where these avenues afford relief, 
the traveler whose course lies diagonally to the cardinal 
points, must traverse two sides of the great square which 
lies between his starting point and his destination. He 
may relieve the monotony of the straight streets by taking 
a zigzag course, but he can in no wise abate one jot of the 
distance. 

Think now of the aggregate of unnecessary miles which 
must be traveled in the daily traffic of a great city, (and a 
city which may be termed a vast workshop, to which it may 
almost be said there is " no admittance except on busi- 
ness,") the wear and tear of the teams, and the loss of 
time which might have been saved by a judicious system 
of diagonal avenues. 

Chicago is now preparing to spend millions of dollars 
in constructing a series of parks which are necessarily 
very distant from the thickly peopled districts of the city, 
because land in those districts is too valuable to be 
secured in sufficient quantities for such a purpose. The 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 43 

nearest park of the new system is between four and five 
miles from the Court House, and all of them are on the 
open prairie, and as yet far beyond the limits of any 
semblance of city streets. They are situated respectively 
north, west and south of the city, and are to be connected 
with each other by a chain of grand avenues or boule- 
vards, having roadways on each side of a central mall, 
lined with trees and adorned with fountains and other 
objects of attractive interest. 

The arguments most relied upon by the advocates of 
parks have been that they serve as " lungs to the city," 
by furnishing a magazine of pure air to supply the 
densely peopled districts, while they provide also a place 
of resort and recreation for the inhabitants, where they 
may seek relief from the turmoil of the confined streets 
in which their lives are passed in daily toil and refresh 
themselves with the sight of trees and grass and flowers. 
But how do these conditions apply to the case we are 
considering.-* 

The streets of Chicago are all sufficiently wide to 
afford ample ventilation. There are no densely peo- 
pled, narrow, winding streets, courts or lanes ; and if 
there were, what relief would they get from parks five 
miles off ? 

Doubtless in time those parks will be enclosed within 
the city which will grow up around and extend far 
beyond them, but it will be no population of laboring 
poor that will dwell in their vicinity. The palaces of the 
rich will surround and overlook them, and it will be only 
on an occasional holiday that the toiling denizen of the 



44 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



central business marts, can afford the time or the means 
to go with his family to those distant gardens. That this 
assertion is not a mere theory, is proved by the following 
extracts from the report of the Central Park Commis- 
sioners for the year 1872, which has come to hand since 
the above was written : 

" That large part of the people of the city to whom, 
from the closer quarters in which they are most of the 
time confined, the Park would seem to promise the great- 
est advantage, cannot ordinarily leave' their daily tasks, at 
the earliest, till after four o'clock ; nor their homes, which 
in the majority of cases are yet south of Twenty-fifth 
street, before five. A visit to the Park, then, involves 
two trips by street cars, which with the walk to and from 
them will occupy more than an hour. The street cars 
on all the lines approaching the Park are at five o'clock 
overcrowded, and most members of a family entering one 
below Twenty-fifth street will be unable to get a seat. 
Under these circumstances, the pleasure of a short visit 
to the Park, especially in the latter part of a hot 
summer's day, does not often compensate for the fatigue 
and discomfort it involves, and accordingly it appears 
that as yet a majority of those who frequent the Park 
are people in comfortable circumstances, and largely of 
families, the heads of which have either retired from 
business or are able to leave their business early in the 
day. Except on Sunday, and Saturday afternoons and 
general holidays, the number of residents of the city who 
come to the Park in carriages is larger than of those who 
come by street cars and on foot." 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, 45 

And again : " It is obvious from the great difference in 
the relative numbers of people who visit the Park 
respectively in carriages and on foot on ordinary days, 
and on Sundays and holidays, that to the great body of 
citizens it is yet too difficult of access to be of use except 
on special occasions ; a large majority of the visits of 
ordinary short daily recreation being made at present by 
the comparatively small number, who can afford to use 
pleasure carriages or saddle horses, or of those from 
whose houses a walk to it is easy and agreeable. " 

That Chicago should even now provide for future 
certain wants, evinces commendable wisdom and excep- 
tional energy and enterprise, but if younger cities will 
learn wisdom by her experience, and exercise an earlier 
forethought, they may secure results which are unattain- 
able for Chicago by having their parks and boulevards as 
integral portions of the city, instead of being merely 
ornamental appendages. 



46 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 




CHAPTER IV. 

ADVANTAGES TO BE SECURED BY TIMELY FORETHOUGHT 
INJURIOUS RESULTS OF RECTANGULAR ARRANGE- 
MENT ON AN IRREGULAR SURFACE SUBURBAN 

ADDITIONS. 

AVING pointed out some of the defects arising 
from the neglect to provide in season for future 
necessities, I propose now to consider some of the 
advantages which might have been secured by such fore- 
thought; in doing which, however, I propose only to 
make general suggestions which may be equally applica- 
ble elsewhere, and which I trust will serve to prove the 
truth of my assertion that even on a level site the princi- 
ples of landscape architecture (according to the definition 
I have given) may be judiciously applied to the arrange- 
ment of towns. 

Let us suppose the central and most important busi- 
ness portion of the city to be surrounded by a series of 
small parks, connected by broad avenues or boulevards, 
tastefully planted and adorned with fountains, flower 
beds and appropriate works of art. Let other portions 
of the city, appropriated to special branches of business 
or manufactures, be similarly surrounded and isolated, 
and from each of these areas, let a series of boulevards 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 47 

radiate on lines diagonal to the general course of the 
streets, and extend as far as might be desirable, till they 
merge in other similar avenues, or connect with extensive 
outlying parks or suburban additions. 

The effect would be that the inhabitants of every part 
of the city would find in these small parks and boule- 
vards attractive pleasure grounds immediately accessible 
to their homes, to which they could resort when the toils 
of the day were over; suburban residents would enjoy 
the pleasure of a drive through a series of pretty gardens 
on their daily route to and from their places of business, 
instead of being forced to take a zigzag course through a 
series of monotonous streets, or travel a weary distance 
out of town to find a place prepared expressly for a 
pleasure drive and the saving of time, distance and labor, 
which would be secured in the daily traffic of the city, 
would in the aggregate more than compensate for the 
value of the land thus occupied. The beauty and 
attractive interest of the city in the eyes of visitors and 
strangers would be incalculably increased by the refresh- 
ing variety and superb effect of coming at intervals upon 
these beautifully verdant areas, and the importance of 
attaining such a reputation is rarely appreciated as it 
deserves. The attractions of a city do not alone consist 
in its architectural magnificence, or its sources of amuse- 
ment and culture, though these are important elements. 
But in order to the full enjoyment of its theatres, 
museums, libraries, lectures and social pleasures, it is 
essential that the means of access to them should be 
rendered not- only easy, and free from danger or dis- 



48 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, 

comfort, but attractive and elegant, so that the recollec- 
tion of the enjoyment shall not be marred by an 
association of physical discomfort in its attainment. The 
annual increase of over 100,000 strangers to the winter 
population of Paris, is due quite as much to the fact that 
physical comfort and all the appliances of elegance and 
luxury are as carefully provided in the means of attain- 
ment of the objects of attraction, as in the objects them- 
selves. Supposing each one to expend only $500 during 
the winter's sojourn, a total of fifty millions is added to 
the city's income, a reflection which is worthy the consid- 
eration of those who think it a waste of money to spend 
it for anything but actual necessities. But beside these 
advantages, the most important of all, and one which at 
this time will need no argument beyond its mere state- 
ment, is the obvious fact that the surrounding of the 
principal business and manufacturing districts of the 
city with broad areas planted with trees, and dividing the 
outer portions into sections by means of such boulevards 
as have been suggested, would constitute the best possible 
safeguard against any wide-spread conflagration. In 
every design of town arrangement, reference should be 
had to the danger resulting from prevailing winds of 
peculiar force, and so far as possible the ris-k should be 
averted or guarded against by means of intersecting open 
areas arranged with reference thereto. 

I am of course aware that this general and incomplete 
statement of a system is liable to criticism, and ma.ny 
serious and perhaps some insuperable obstacles to its 
detailed execution will present themselves to the practi- 



r 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 49 

cal mind. I shall not enter upon the discussion of these 
questions. I do not presume even to say that in any 
case it would be possible to carry out such a design as I 
have suggested in all its details. My object has been to 
point out defects in preexisting systems which cannot be 
denied, and to suggest principles by which those evils 
may be averted. How far those principles are capable 
of practical application, remains to be seen. It is 
certain that we have such an opportunity as no nation 
ever before enjoyed of testing and developing both the 
theory and the practice of the art. 

Before taking leave of Chicago it may not be amiss to 
call attention to a lesson, the truth of which has been 
confirmed by her recent experience. 

The opportunity of reconstructing the plan of a con- 
siderable portion of the city, before rebuilding upon the 
burnt districts, naturally suggested itself as too favorable 
to be suffered to escape, but the effort at its accomplish- 
ment resulted as all similar efforts have done. Before 
the ruins of London had ceased smoking after the great 
fire of 1666, a plan for the reconstruction of the burnt 
district was prepared and laid before the King by Chris- 
topher Wren, which was so obvious an improvement upon 
the old system of narrow and crooked streets, that a very 
strong effort was made to secure its adoption, but it was 
found impossible to reconcile the multitude of compli- 
cated and conflicting interests which must necessarily be 
affected, and no essential change was secured. New 
York had a similar experience after the fire of 1835, and 
Chicago now 'adds her experience in proof of the fact 

4 



50 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

that except under a despotic government, any essential 
alteration of the original plan of a city must be regarded 
as hopeless. 

Since the above was written, the destruction by fire of 
the richest portion of Boston has raised the same question 
of the possibility of re-arrangement in that city. The 
following article from the Boston Commercial Bulletin 
contains so much that is pertinent and interesting in con- 
nection with the subject that I insert it entire : 

DIFFICULTIES OF REBUILDING A CITY. 

WHAT THE BOSTON MERCHANTS SAY. 

As we predicted would be the case, the efforts of our Street Com- 
missioners to secure the desired improvement of those business thor- 
oughfares included within the burnt district, preliminary to rebuilding 
it, are met with strenuous opposition from a large majority of the 
abutters. To be sure, their objections are of a pui-ely personal char- 
acter, and do not pretend to be based on any grounds of public pol- 
icy ; but, nevertheless, they are of a very serious nature, and have 
raised the question as to how far those public exigences which demand 
the widening and straightening of these thoroughfares will justify our 
municipal government in running counter to the private interests 
involved in the undertaking. This question will have to be carefully 
considered, not only to secure the ends of justice, but also, to save the 
city from incurring an enormous addition to its debt in the shape of 
land damages. 

That these projected improvements will greatly depreciate the 
value, for mercantile purposes, of hundreds of costly estates situated 
in the very heart of the city, where building sites command almost 
fabulous prices, there can be no question. Many of these estates, 
with every inch of land and store room appertaining to them utilized 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 51 

and crammed to their utmost capacity were barely large enough to 
accommodate the growing business of their occupants before the fire. 
Looking to the probable wants of the commercial future they needed 
to be enlarged rather than curtailed. But if they must be cut down, 
and. thus rendered unavailable for the purposes of business on a large 
scale, to which they were formerly devoted, in order that we may 
have immunity from great fires, as well as wide and commodious 
streets running through from State street to the South End railroad 
depots, then their owners and lessees must be fairly paid for the per- 
sonal sacrifices demanded of them. They cannot be expected to 
offset these sacrifices on the score of betterments because there is no 
such thing as betterments in these cases. 

A widened street can be of no possible benefit to an abuttor, if it 
does not leave him land enough to rebuild a store on such as will 
accommodate his business. Besides, it is the opinion of many of 
these abutters, that wider streets, although they may afford greater 
facilities for through travel and transportation, will not offer any 
special or additional attraction to their local trade. It is also a nota- 
ble fact that in most cases where they are ready to admit the public 
necessity of such street improvements, they still insist that the 
widening can most easily and cheaply be affected on the side opposite 
to that on which their own premises are located. Such an opinion, of 
course, is natural ; but then it shows that our merchants and real 
estate owners in that quarter of the city are standing in a defensive 
attitude against what they regard as an impending slaughter of their 
interests, and hence it behooves our municipal authorities to move 
with great caution and forbearance in the matter. 

But while we would have them exceedingly careful not to take a 
single foot of land needed for private business purposes that is not 
positively required by the public exigences of the present occasion, 
and, moreover, do not believe that it is necessary to make every street 
running down to or parallel to our water front sixty or seventy feet 
wide, yet we would counsel no niggardly or penny -wise policy in 
carrying out a system of local inprovements which is to stand for all 
future time. These should be undertaken on a liberal but not extrav- 



52 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

agant scale, sacrificing nothing to the spirit of prodigality, but keep- 
ing in view the two great fundamental ideas of utility and progress. 
We must not commit the error of providing only for present emer- 
gencies, but must try to realize the wants of Boston commerce as it 
will be a century hence. The new business edifices to be put up in 
the burned district will probably be the most costly as well as the 
most substantial ever erected in any city on this side of the A-tlantic, 
and after they are built it will be too late to think of making changes 
in our street lines. Whatever is to be done in this connection must 
be done beforehand, as the sad opportunity afforded by this great con- 
flagration is not likely to be repeated in that locality. 

But, after all that can be done to economize space for commercial 
purposes, th e hard fact must still remain, that the business formerly 
accommodated in this burnt district can never be wholly put back 
there. Even with narrow streets its territorial limits afforded but a 
scant pattern and no " elbow room " for the great branches of trade 
which had bee n concentrated there. But after these contemplated 
street improvements shall have been carried out, it will be as physi- 
cally impossible for them to get back bodily into their old quarters, 
as it would be to crowd a bushel of corn into a peck measure. They 
must hereafter be content to scatter themselves, and locate further up 
town, or wherever there may be a chance to spread out with the con- 
ditions of a healthy and natural growth. The Fort Hill district must 
be built up and utilized ; the old North end must be rejuvenated, 
and its antique structures give place to buildings suited to the wants 
of modern commerce. Even the retail trade must surrender its time- 
honored haunts on Washington and Hanover streets to the pressure 
of the wholesale business, while our central resident population must 
retreat before the march of improvement and find better and more 
pleasant homes in the outlying wards on suburban towns. 

Whatever may be thought of such an arrangement as 
I have suggested, for a perfectly level site, it is hardly- 
conceivable that any sane man will attempt seriously to 
defend the rectangular system when applied to a tract 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 53 

comprising much inequality of surface. Wherever it has 
been applied it has proved enormously costly, incon- 
venient and destructive of natural beauty. And yet the 
selfish greed of real estate proprietors prevents a depart- 
ure from the practice, and renders them callous to the 
sufferings they inflict upon the future inhabitants, pro- 
vided only that they can secure the largest immediate 
returns from the sale of lots, with the least possible out- 
lay in preparing them for market. Recent experience 
has demonstrated in repeated instances that a larger 
outlay for a more elaborate and tasteful design for sub- 
urban additions has proved sufficiently remunerative to 
warrant farther investment in preparatory plans and 
improvements, and with such precedents it is to be hoped 
that the spur of self-interest will prevent the perpetra- 
tion of such barbarism as has heretofore prevailed. 

Take the common case of a town on a river bank, 
whose site comprises a level area of bottom land of 
greater or less extent, backed by a range of steep wooded 
bluffs, which are intersected at irregular intervals by 
ravines, diverging at various angles from the course of 
the main valley. Every Western traveler can recall 
instances of towns so situated, and the hideous results 
of the effort to force nature into formal shape by laying 
out the streets without the slightest regard to topograph- 
ical features. The exercise of artistic skill and judgment 
might often render the peculiar natural features of such 
a site, the source of its most striking and attractive 
characteristic. The level land next the river is obviously 
the most appropriate situation for the commercial and 



54 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

manufacturing interests, and the high lands which over- 
look it, for the best residences. The steep hillsides, if 
preserved in their natural condition, or developed into a 
more artistic expression of their natural characteristics, 
by appropriate planting and culture, would form a strik- 
ingly beautiful feature in the general aspect of the town. 
Advantage should be taken of ravines to secure an easy 
ascent to the summit of the bluff, and a fine avenue 
arranged along its brow, which would furnish building 
sites for the best residences, overlooking the lower town, 
and commanding the views up and down the river. 
Footpaths could be arranged up and down the bluff, 
winding sufficiently to secure easy grades and taking 
advantage of any natural terrace or " coigne of vantage " 
to increase the picturesque effect by the introduction of 
appropriate decorations : as a fountain, a monument, or 
perhaps a rustic arbor and a bit of rich lawn. Thus the 
face of the bluff which is commonly rendered a hideous 
looking precipice, scarred with gullies, and unavailable 
for any useful purpose, would become a chief ornament 
and striking feature in the general aspect of the town. 

The picturesque and attractive character which may 
be conferred upon a town by thus making an ornamental 
use of areas which are useless for other purposes, is 
almost inconceivable to one who has given no thought to 
the subject, and this may be very greatly increased by 
attention to various little details, which are never even 
thought of by those to whom the work is commonly 
entrusted. Suppose for mstance, as is frequently the case 
in the West, that the site of a town is intersected by one 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 55 

or more ravines, beginning a mile or more from the shore 
of the lake or river on which the town is situated. In 
many instances these ravines assume an exceedingly 
picturesque and attractive character, attaining a depth of 
a hundred feet or more, sometimes comprising at the 
bottom a charming bit of secluded lawn, while the almost 
precipitous sides are clothed with a fine growth of forest 
trees, and in the spring are brilliant with the blossoms of 
the trillium, anemone, blood root, and other wild flowers, 
which seem to love to cluster upon such positions as are 
most difficult of access. The invariable custom in laying 
out land comprising such features, is to place the roads 
at such a distance from the ravine as to admit one tier 
of lots, the houses on which, fronting on the street, will 
have their back yards running to the bottom or across 
the ravine, the object being simply that the proprietors 
may get paid for the land comprised in the ravine, which 
is unavailable for any useful purpose. The result is 
that all effect of natural beauty is lost to the general 
public, who never get sight of the ravine except from 
some point where a road is carried across it, and then its 
attractive expression is entirely destroyed by the fences 
running across it to mark the boundaries of the different 
lots, as well as by its being made the dirt hole in which 
every family deposits its accumulating store of old bar- 
rels, boxes and battered tinware. If, instead of this, the 
roads were carried on each side just on the edges of the 
bank, and buildings only allowed on the opposite side, 
the ravine would form an ornamental feature between, 
on which the houses on each side would front, and the 



56 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

residents on each side would feel a mutual pride and 
pleasure in keeping it tidy, and adorning it with trees and 
shrubbery. It is easy to perceive that such a street 
would form a highly ornamental feature in a town, the 
picturesque effect of which would be greatly increased 
by the occasional introduction of a tasteful bridge as 
convenience might dictate. 

These few hints as to the application of general prin- 
ciples will serve, I trust, to illustrate my meaning and to 
prove that the element of beauty in a town as in a private 
place, must be integral to itself, — the result of archi- 
tectural arrangement, and the development thereby of 
whatever attractive features its site may possess or com- 
mand, and that it is only by the exercise of timely 
forethought in the preparation of a design, that these 
results can be secured. Subsequent decoration by fine 
buildings and works of art will of course serve to increase 
and promote the general effect of magnificence, but such 
decoration can never render a place beautiful which is 
not intrinsically so, any more than costly jewelry and 
elaborate dressing can confer beauty upon an awkward, 
plain and ungainly person. 

Of late years the attention of capitalists has been 
largely drawn to the subject of landscape architecture as 
a means of increasing the value of suburban property, 
by the tasteful arrangement of large areas to render them 
attractive as building sites. In some instances very 
large sums have been expended in making improvements 
before offering the lots for sale; the roads being con- 
structed in the most thorough manner, and ample pro- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 57 

vision made for sewerage, water, gas, etc. ; and the road- 
sides and public areas tastefully arranged and planted. 
In other cases only the principal roads were opened, the 
lots staked and numbered and sold by the plot. In one 
instance which has come to my knowledge, the proprietor 
has himself built the houses before offering the lots for 
sale. From the best evidence I have been able to obtain, 
the plan of making all the needful arrangements before- 
hand, though involving a large outlay, has proved on the 
whole the most satisfactory in its results. " Supply 
creates demand," and purchasers seeing what they want 
ready at hand, with the assurance that no further assess- 
ments are to be levied for improvements yet to be made, 
are ready and glad to pay liberally for its immediate 
possession. The advantage of building before selling is 
that it enables the proprietor to control the style, and 
prevent the introduction of edifices of an objectionable 
character. 

The success of such an enterprise must in all cases 
be finally dependent upon the architectural skill dis- 
played in its arrangement. Men of sense will not be 
attracted or caught by a mere ornamental design, show- 
ing that the ground is cut up into irregular blocks by 
squirming roads, which not unfrequently are supposed to 
constitute the attractive characteristic of the landscape 
gardener's art. A curve for the sake of avoiding a 
straight line, where the latter is most desirable, and no 
obstacle exists to prevent it, is contrary to common sense, 
which good taste will never violate. The test of the 
architectural- skill of a design can only be attained by a 



58 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

careful examination of its adaptation to the ground. If 
it is then found that the roads are so arranged as to fit 
the natural surface, securing the easiest grades and 
leaving the best building sites in the most desirable 
positions relative to them, and showing that the objects 
for which they will be principally wanted, whether for 
business or pleasure, have been observed in their arrange- 
ment so that they will obviously facilitate those objects, 
then the essential elements of skilful arrangement will 
have been secured, on which the comfort and convenience 
of the occupants must be daily dependant. 

Unless these points have been observed, the introduc- 
tion of ornamental areas, lakes, fountains, etc., will not 
compensate for lack of common sense in the disposition 
of those features which affect the daily comfort of the 
residents. 

In arranging suburban additions to Western towns it is 
important to hold out to purchasers the inducement of 
an opportunity to secure a return of investment by future 
further subdivision, and to this end the lots should be of 
such size, and so shaped that such subdivision may be 
easily made, without injury to the portion which the 
purchaser would wish to reserve for his own occupation. 
In every growing town of the West is to be found a 
numerous class of men of moderate means who are 
seeking an opportunity to invest a small surplus in a 
home for themselves, but who cannot afford to purchase 
solely with that view, yet may be induced to make an 
extra effort if the prospect is held out that a future sale 
of a portion may aid them in meeting subsequent pay- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 59 

ments. A simple division into rectangular lots of proper 
size for a homestead does not meet this demand effect- 
ually : First, because they are not large enough for 
subdivision, and, secondly, because they have no refer- 
ence to the shape of the ground, which is often such that 
no portion can be set off which is in itself attractive, 
without serious injury to the beauty or convenience of 
that which is left. 

The men who are desirous of making such investments 
are usually of the most industrious and thrifty class, and 
consequently such as it is most desirable to secure as 
permanent occupants, as a means of giving such charac- 
ter of stability and respectability to the place as will 
prove the most powerful attraction to others. 

Here it is that the advantage becomes apparent of 
making the arrangement of the roads and lots conform 
to the shape of the ground in such manner that every 
desirable building site becomes available, without injury 
or inconvenience to others, which in case of inequality of 
surface or the presence of attractive natural features it 
is impossible to do by a system of rectangles. It is 
obvious that for the accomplishment of the object in the 
most desirable manner, the tract to be subdivided should 
comprise an area of considerable extent, and in most 
cases this can only be secured by the mutual consent of 
several proprietors. My own experience in repeated 
instances has given me confidence that proprietors of 
adjoining estates will generally acquiesce in a plan of 
improvement which commends itself when fairly laid 
before thern, as being mutually advantageous; but on the 



6o LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

Other hand, it must be confessed that hardly any commun- 
ities are free from representatives of the class whose 
object seems to be to profit by the labor and enterprise 
of others, and who block the efforts of their neighbors by 
refusing to cooperate with them. 

It would be easy to point out instances of towns pr 
villages possessing all the requisite elements of attractive 
development, but in which the efforts of the enterprising 
and public spirited members of the community have 
been completely thwarted by the swinish obstinacy of a 
single individual of the class alluded to. But such men 
have existed from the time ^sop wrote the fable of the 
dog in the manger, and we can only trust that like other 
vermin whose presence is offensive, they may serve some 
useful purpose of which we — and probably they them- 
selves — are ignorant. 

The point of essential interest in the experience of 
those who have undertaken the construction of orna- 
mental suburban additions, is the evidence they afford 
that tasteful and skillfully arranged improvements are 
readily appreciated, and if wisely managed are very sure 
to prove lucrative investments. 

Inasmuch as they add materially to the attractions of 
a city, and enhance the value of real estate in its vicinity, 
the projectors of such improvements should be encour- 
aged so far as possible by liberal treatment on the part of 
municipal authorities. Even if the motive be only a 
speculative one the result is nevertheless a public benefit 
and every such effort should be facilitated by such 
public aid as may be legitimately afforded. 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 6 1 



CHAPTER V. 

CITY PARKS — LESSONS OF THE CENTRAL PARK DIFFI- 
CULTY OF SELECTING A SITE FOR A PARK METHOD 

OF RELIEF ADVANTAGES OF A PLAN — PROPER MAN- 
AGEMENT OF STREET PLANTING. 



CHIEF difficulty in all attempts at the creation of 
a park in the vicinity of any city, has been that of 
agreeing upon its location. The history of the 
Central Park comprises some incidental features of inter- 
est, which may not be apparent to the casual observers. In 
the first place there was scarcely any room for dispute as 
to locality. If New York was to have a park at all, it could 
only be in that direction. Singularly enough,' too, the Cen- 
tral Park serves to some extent to corroborate what I have 
heretofore said, of the effect of making ornamental use of 
land which is valueless for other purposes. The land it 
occupies was a series of barren ledges, of such forbidding 
aspect that no one was tempted to incur the expense of 
improving even so small a portion as was required for a 
suburban residence, and its only inhabitants were the 
hordes of squatters, whose shanties, clustering under the 
shelter of the rocks, served only to heighten the dreary 
aspect of the place. The land in the vicinity possessed 
only a nominal value, and the prospect of its settlement 



62 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

seemed very remote". The work at its inception was 
denounced by many short-sighted economists as a meas- 
ure of indefensible extravagance, and all the sterotyped 
phrases of abuse, which pertain to political blackguardism 
were brought to bear upon those who favored its prosecu- 
tion. Yet in the ten years succeeding the commence- 
ment of work upon the park, the increased valuation of 
taxable property in the wards immediately surrounding it 
was no less than fifty-four million dollars, affording a sur- 
plus, after paying the interest on all the city bonds issued 
for the purchase and construction of the park, of three 
million dollars, a sum sufficient, if used as a sinking fund, 
to pay the entire principal and interest of the cost of the 
park in less time than was required for its construction. 
The incidental value of such a work as a means of at- 
tracting and diffusing wealth in the city is, of course, ines- 
timable, but no more conclusive evidence could be 
afforded than can be clearly proved and stated, of the 
practical value of broad and liberal schemes of improve- 
ment which add to die elegance of a city and render it 
attractive to visitors, while they strengthen the local pride 
and affection of the inhabitants. 

On the other hand, the Central Park fails to supply the 
demand of the old and densely peopled regions of the 
city, for an easily accessible place of resort for pedestri- 
ans, and such a place in the heart of the city. New York 
with all her wealth will never be able to secure, and yet 
such resorts for those who have not the means to provide 
themselves with the enjoyment of nature's gifts of refresh- 
ment are certainly as important, and involve moral duties 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. (iT, 

as onerous, as the provision of the more extensive driving 
parks for the wealthier classes. 

Boston, in this respect, in her Common and Public Gar- 
den, comprising seventy-five acres in the heart of the 
city, is better provided than any city in the country, but 
Boston has no grand outside park, though she has abund- 
ance of admirable sites which are available. The diffi- 
culty is the one already suggested, that no one site will 
sitit all parties, and any one party can block the game of 
the others. The case is by no means a singular one, and 
the readiest means of relief would seem to be the adop- 
tion of a system of mutual improvements between the city 
and its outlying suburbs, in the prosecution of which, the 
suggestions I have made in regard to the improvement of 
otherwise valueless land might be wisely applied.* 

Instead of looking for a tract possessing intrinsically 
beautiful or picturesque features, let the city avail itself 
of any tracts which are intrinsically valueless, and pro- 
ceed to adorn and render them attractive. Such places 
may be found of greater or less extent within the limits, 
or in the vicinity of almost every city, which detract from 
or destroy the value of adjacent property by their 
unsightly or offensive appearance, as being marshy or 

*Since the above was written, I have received from Boston an 
" Essay and plan for the improvement of the city of Boston," by my 
former partner, R. Morris Copeland. The general design is precisely 
in conformity with the principles I have advocated — a series of parks 
connected by broad avenues, dividing the city into sections, and pro- 
viding for those classes who are least able to provide for themselves, 
the refreshment of pleasure gardens within easy access of their homes. 



64 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

composed of barren ledges. The Central Park has been 
cited as an illustration of the effect of improving such a 
tract in increasing the value of surrounding property, and 
a still more striking instance is that of the Pare de Buttes 
Chaumont, constructed since 1864, in Paris, which occu- 
pies the site of old abandoned plaster quarries. Before 
the park was made, the ground was an arid wilderness of 
clay mounds and excavations left by the quarrymen. By 
skillful management this has been converted into an ex- 
ceedingly picturesque tract, comprising a lake, in the cen- 
ter of which rises an isolated rock more than one hundred 
feet high. Precipices of corresponding height rise from 
its shores, and are connected with the island by a suspen- 
sion bridge, and all parts rendered accessible by pic- 
turesque winding paths. These precipitous heights are 
merely the remains of the old quarries, and, of course, 
their crevices and level areas have been provided with 
soil, and planted with appropriate trees, shrubs and vines, 
while the more level portions are arranged with carriage 
drives — the whole comprising forty-five acres of orna- 
mental ground, quite unique in its character. 

The improvement of such areas, which are worthless 
for other purposes, at once confers value upon surround- 
ing property by rendering it attractive for residence pur- 
poses. If the plan were adopted by municipalities of 
securing and improving such tracts wherever they were 
available in eligible situations, even if they comprised but 
a few acres, connecting them with each other and, if pos- 
sible, with outlying suburbs, by means of fine ornamental 
avenues, while the suburban towns themselves adopted a 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 65 

corresponding system so far as means and opportunities 
enabled them to do so, the effect would be to furnish a 
widely extended system of magnificent drives, expanding 
occasionally into gem-like gardens of irregular size and 
shape, and conferring a park-like character upon the 
whole surrounding country, which would exert a wider 
and more beneficial influence in cultivating and refining 
the popular taste than is possible by means of isolated 
parks to be visited solely for purposes of recreation. 
Such a system would afford, in fact, a greater extent of 
driveway, and probably through a greater variety of 
scenery than any city would be able to secure in a single 
park ; it would be readily accessible from all parts of the 
city, as well as the suburbs with which it would directly 
connect, and the expense of purchase, construction and 
maintenance would be less than that of a single area of 
equal extent, while it would be more cheerfully borne 
because it benefits would be more widely and equally dis- 
tributed, while the work of improvement and consequent 
cost might also be extended over a longer period of time 
instead of being condensed, and enormously increased, as 
it must be, if its immediate completion is demanded. 

Herein, in fact, - is one of the chief advantages of a 
previously prepared design of arrangement, whether it be 
for a town, a park, or a private estate, since by means of 
it the work can be arranged in order of its importance, 
the most essential portions performed as required from 
year to year, and with the knowledge from the outset that 
it is always progressing to the accomplishment of a deter- 
mined end, the unity of design being preserved through- 

5 



66 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

out. Thus if the general design for the arrangement of 
the fine avenues and parks is determined, the work of 
preparation may proceed in order of importance, the first 
being grading and drainage, because until that is done 
there can be no planting, which is the most essential 
object of esthetic improvement. When the planting is 
done, further outlay for improvement may be postponed, 
or expended from year to year. Architectural structures 
and ornamental works of art can be added at any time, 
and may continue to be contributed as long as they can 
be tastefully introduced, but the growth of trees is the 
work of time, which can only be partially, and by no means 
satisfactorily accomplished by the modern appliances 
for the removal of trees of large size. An immediate 
effect, it is true, may be thus secured at a very large cost, 
but the trees thus removed will never attain the grace 
and dignity of form and rich luxuriance of foliage which 
comprise the essential elements of their beauty and 
character. 

No such thing as a system of street planting under 
municipal regulation has, to my knowledge, been adopted 
by any city in the country. Every proprietor of a lot 
claims, and is allowed, the right of planting what he 
pleases in front of his own premises, and the result, of 
course, is an utter deficiency of the symmetrical and im- 
posing effect which might be secured by the practical 
application of an artistic design. No two proprietors act 
in concert in the selection of variety or size of trees. 
One man pays a high price to secure two or three large 
elms, brought from the woods, where they have run up 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 67 

tall and spindling, with a tuft of branches at the top, 
which are cut back to stumpy projecting prongs, to cor- 
respond to the necessary mutilated condition of the roots. 
Such trees may survive, and even send out a luxuriant 
growth of spray and foliage, but the natural characteris- 
tics of the tree are lost and can never be fully recovered, 
and the chances are that it will exhibit from the outset 
only a meagre and sickly appearance. His next neighbor, 
perhaps, goes to a nursery and gets half a dozen maples, 
horse chestnuts or ash trees, and plants them all on a 
space no larger than would be covered by a single one of 
either variety when fully grown. The next plants no trees 
outside his front area, but crowds that enclosure with 
evergreens, which, if they ever attain half their natural 
size, will be pressing into his windows on one side and 
interfering with the sidewalk on the other, while long 
spaces are left vacant on which no planting whatever is 
done. The value and importance of trees as a means of 
increasing the beauty and attractive character of a fine 
street, requires no stronger argument than the fact that 
even such a helter-skelter, unmeaning and slovenly style 
of planting as the above, if continued for sufficient dis- 
tance to give an appearance of general verdure to the 
view up or down the street, excites an involuntary emo- 
tion of pleasure in the mind of the observer ; but few 
people who have not seen it can realize how much this is 
increased if the work has been systematically done ac- 
cording to design, the varieties of trees being selected 
according to natural characteristics of form and foliage, 
and the individual trees being of uniform size and sym- 



68 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

metrical form. But in order to the possibility of such a 
system, it is necessary not only that the whole work of 
street planting should be under the direction of a compe- 
tent superintendent, acting by municipal authority, but also 
that he should have at command a nursery of such extent 
as to furnish abundant supplies of trees grown and pruned 
expressly for the purpose, so that any desirable number 
of the same size and general form, of any given variety, 
can be furnished to order and a whole street planted at 
once. The nursery, therefore, should also belong to the 
city, and be under the direction of the city forester. The 
cost to individuals would be trifling, just as the cost of 
water is insignificant when furnished by the city, in com- 
parison with what it would be if every man had to supply 
himself, and if the increased elegance and beauty, which 
may be thus secured, could be generally appreciated, the 
measure would commend itself to all who had a reason- 
able degree of local pride and affection. 

" The greatest part of the beauty of Paris is due to her 
gardens and her trees. She is, indeed, a city of palaces ; 
but which is the most attractive, the view up that splendid 
avenue and garden stretching from the heart of the city 
to the Arc de Triomphe, or that of the finest architectural 
features of Paris } What would the new boulevards of 
white stone be without the softening and refreshing aid of 
those long lines of well cared-for trees that everywhere 
rise around the buildings .? The makers of new Paris — 
who deserve the thanks of all the filthy cities of the world 
for setting such an example — answer these questions by 
pulling down close and filthy quarters where the influen- 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 69 

ces of sweet air and green trees were never felt and the 
sun could scarcely penetrate, and turning them into gems 
of bosky verdure and sweetness ; by piercing them with 
long wide streets flanked with lines of green trees ; and in 
a word, by relieving in every possible direction man's 
work in stone with the changeful and ever pleasing beauty 
of vegetable life. In Paris public gardening is not con- 
fined to parks in one end of the town, and absent from 
the places where it is most wanted. It follows the street 
builders with trees, turns the little squares into gardens 
unsurpassed for good taste and beauty, drops down grace- 
ful fountains here and there, and margins them with 
flowers ; it presents to the eye of the poorest workman 
every charm of vegetation, it brings him pure air, and 
aims directly and effectively at the recreation and benefit 
of the people," 

The above extract, from a most charming and instruct- 
ive book, " The Parks, Promenades and Gardens of Paris," 
by W. Robinson, F. L. S., conveys in a few words the idea 
I am endeavoring to impress upon the reader, that the ele- 
ments of beauty should be everywhere present, pervading 
all portions of the city as an essential ingredient, instead 
of being confined to a point which is set apart expressly 
for the purpose. 

No man who has the least love of natural beauty can 
fail to admire a fine specimen of a tree, even before it has 
attained the majestic dignity which age alone can confer. 
If its form is symmetrical, its trunk well proportioned to 
the mass of branches and spray which it has to support, 
and its foliage luxuriant and vigorous, conveying the idea 



70 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

of exuberant health, it is always a beautiful object and 
never fails to excite an emotion of pleasure. A street 
lined on each side with such trees of a corresponding size, 
would possess an intrinsic beauty, which would add incal- 
culably to whatever architectural elegance it might pos- 
sess, and would go far to make up for any deficiencies in 
that respect. Variety might be secured by changing the 
character of the mass, but not by an indiscriminate mixture 
of different kinds of trees, which destroys all symmetrical 
effect, and in fact fritters away the sense of variety. 

Let any one observe the character of individual trees 
such as are generally planted in our city streets, and mark 
also the general effect and try to contrast it in his mind 
with the possibility above suggested. He will very rarely 
find a tree possessing any real beauty of its own, and very 
many, and especially of those of large size which have 
been removed at great cost, are not only utterly deficient 
in grace and symmetry of form, but present such a meagre 
and sickly display of foliage as can excite no feeling of 
pleasure in the mind. With such deficiency of attractive 
interest in the individual specimens, and with an utter lack 
of system in planting, it is by no means surprising that no 
effect is produced which is worthy of attention as confer- 
ring any distinct expression. 

The large sums which are annually expended in all our 
cities in tree-planting, are in fact wasted so far as the 
results attained will compare with what might be secured 
by a more judicious system, and it is one of the incon- 
sistencies resulting from general ignorance of the subject, 
that a matter of such vital importance to the beauty and 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 71 

attractive interest of the city should be left uncared for. 
Every city should own or control its own nurseries, in 
which the best varieties of trees for street-planting should 
be grown at such distance apart as would insure a healthy 
development, and pruned and trained in symmetrical form 
till they attained a proper size for planting in their final 
positions. The whole work of planting, including the 
selection and arrangement of varieties, should be under 
the direction of a competent superintendent, who should 
also be responsible for their subsequent care and culture. 
The care of all public areas, and their decoration with 
trees, shrubbery and flowers, should be entrusted to the 
same officer. If competent to the duties of the position 
and faithful in their performance, he might confer upon 
the city a character of refined elegance which is unattain- 
able without such aid by any degree of architectural display. 
While on the subject of street decoration it will be in 
place to allude to the very great addition to their attract- 
ive appearance, which might be secured, on such streets 
and avenues as are occupied by residences standing a few 
feet back from the sidewalk, by the entire abolition of 
front fences, or area railings. These fences and gates are 
often very costly and always very ugly, and as it is very 
rare that two of the same pattern are in juxtaposition, the 
effect of the whole is only that of an infinite variety of 
ugliness. If all these fences were removed, and the front 
area left open to the street, bounded only by a curbing 
rising a few inches above the sidewalk, the sod inside 
lying flush with its surface, the view of the houses would 
be relieved- of a feature which never fails to mar the effect 



72 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

of whatever architectural beauty they may possess, the 
areas themselves would form beautiful additions to the 
attractions of the street by giving a rich finish to its sides, 
and the apparent width of the streets would be increased 
by the depth of the areas on each side. In the progress 
of taste and civilization, men are gradually coming to 
perceive that fences, under any circumstances, are objec- 
tionable, and are only endurable as matters of necessity, 
when they should be as simple and inconspicuous as pos- 
sible. They have been banished from cemetery lots, 
which they have so long been suffered to disfigure, and 
often at enormous cost to the proprietors. They have 
disappeared from all the public squares and small parks 
in New York City, and the additional beauty conferred by 
their removal is almost incredible. The next step will be 
the removal of area railings, and I am confident the day 
is near at hand when we shall wonder that we could ever 
have expended so much money to injure so greatly the 
appearance of our streets. 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 73 




CHAPTER VI. 

IMPORTANCE OF THE WORK WE HAVE TO DO IN PRE- 
PARING THE NEW COUNTRY FOR CIVILIZED HABITA- 
TION LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE THE ART WHICH 

LIES AT ITS FOUNDATION. 

HE world is always wondering at the exhibition 
of the last evidence of human skill, enterprise and 
power. The public works, the palaces, hotels, 
steamboats and ships, which in their day are described as 
magnificent triumphs of ingenuity and energetic enterprise, 
but which in the opinion of croakers must prove ruinous 
to their projectors, are found in a very few years to be 
inadequate to the public necessity, and are so far eclipsed 
by the new creations which that necessity inspires, that 
they sink into comparative insignificance. 

And the same is true of the growth of new cities. To 
some of us who are not yet decrepid, it seems but yesterday 
that travellers who had penetrated by weary stage journey 
into the wilds of Western New York, came back with 
enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful city of Rochester, 
which had sprung into being in a day and attained civic 
rank while the stumps were still standing in the streets. 
Then came Buffalo, and Cincinnati and Chicago, each 
outstripping .the other, and each confident that it was the 



74 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

Ultima Thule. But each has found itself the stepping 
stone to regions of greater and more varied resources, 
demanding more expansive systems of development. 
Chicago in a single generation has risen from an obscure 
village to be the greatest lumber market, the greatest grain 
market, and the greatest provision, market, not in the 
United States alone, but in the world. What is the 
explanation ? Simply that the wealth of production already 
developed in the regions of which she is the depot of 
supply and distribution, is greater than is elsewhere con- 
centrated at any one point. But those regions are but 
thinly settled in comparison to their capacity; their pro- 
ductive powers are not yet half developed, and their whole 
area is insignificant in comparison with what still lies 
beyond unappropriated and valueless till its latent powers 
are touched by the magic wand of labor. 

The burning of Chicago is simply the destruction of the 
depot of the railroads which concentrate there, and the 
means at command for her reconstruction are the com- 
bined wealth of all the regions traversed by those roads 
The energy and enterprise with which she is again springing 
up from her ashes, is based upon such knowledge of the 
value of those resources as inspires the fullest confidence 
of lucrative returns. It astonishes the world because 
there is no precedent by which a realizing sense of the 
measure of those resources can be obtained. And if this 
is true of the regions now tributary to Chicago, which 
have grown up with her and of which she is the just expo- 
nent, how much more difficult is it to obtain an idea of 
all that lies beyond. 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 75 

It is only by comparison with some standard whose 
proportions have assumed a definite form in the mind, 
that any approach to a conception of the vast area which 
still remains unoccupied between the Mississippi and the 
Pacific can be obtained. The statement of its contents 
in acres or square miles conveys no impression whatever. 
Even an inspection of such portions of it as are already 
accessible, serves to aid the mind to grasp the idea of 
its extent only when the comparative insignificance of 
what has been seen is proved by reference to maps show- 
ing its relative proportion to the whole. 

The traveler approaching from the East is impressed 
with the sense of solemn grandeur inspired by the vast 
extent and dreary monotony of the great plains. He 
flies by day and night over a road so level and straight 
as to admit the full speed of steam power, seeing no 
change in the boundless expanse on every side, save 
when he crosses the sandy beds into which great rivers 
have sunk exhausted in the effort to span the weary 
distance. He recalls the fact that he is crossing the 
plains at the narrowest point, and tries in vain to con- 
ceive of their transverse extent from their unknown limits 
in the frozen North to their Southern boundaries in 
Mexico. 

Air this region which till a comparatively recent date 
has been supposed to be a desert and incapable of culti- 
vation, requires only forest culture, to restore the humidity 
of climate, which is all that is needed to develop its 
capacity of production. The possibility of forest culture 
has been abundantly proved at various points, and espe- 



76 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

daily by the experimental nurseries established by Mr. 
R. S. Elliott on the line of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. 
The railroad companies are adopting measures for the 
prosecution of the work of tree planting on a scale com- 
mensurate with its acknowledged importance. Meantime 
individuals and colonies are everywhere penetrating the 
borders of the vast region, and like the silent and insen- 
sible process of cellular growth, the germ is expanding 
which we know must result in their final complete 
occupation. 

The vague sense of solemnity resulting from the simple 
impression of vast, inconceivable extent, in crossing these 
regions is almost appalling. But the continued, solemn 
monotone seems but the appropriate and fitting prelude 
to the glorious revelation at its close, when all at once, 
as if by magic, the whole Western sky is filled with the 
grand outline of the Rocky Mountain chain, the majestic 
forms of their great spurs thrown out upon the plains 
like outposts guarding the flanks of the deep gorges 
which give access to the mystic land beyond, while in 
the far distance the sky is fretted with the endless variety 
of mountain forms and snow-clad ranges, which impress 
upon the mind the conviction that the vast plains which 
have just been traversed are only justly proportionate as 
the pedestal of so grand a monument. 

The combined area of all the States east of the 
Mississippi is less than that of the regions which still lie 
unappropriated to the use of civilized man between that 
river and the Pacific Ocean. Portions of it have filled 
up rapidly since the opening of the Pacific railroads, and 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, 77 

thriving towns and cities have sprung up where but 
yesterday was the home of the Indian or the trapper. 
The traveler is astonished at finding such a population, 
supplied with all the refinements and luxuries of civili- 
zation, in the regions whose names have always been 
synonymous in his mind with scenes of savage loneliness, 
and traveling only on the easily accessible routes which 
have been thus occupied, he is apt to imagine that the 
most important part of the work is already done, but the 
idea thus attained of the extent already settled is the 
best possible standard to enable the mind to grasp the 
conception of that which remains, when by reference to 
the map the comparative insignificance of the former is 
discovered. 

Year by year the advancing tide of civilization is 
forcing its way by new routes into this region of mystery 
and beauty. Year by year new lands are appropriated 
and the work of preparation for human habitation com- 
menced, and year by year the sites are selected on 
which new towns and cities are to grow up and form the 
central points of supply and distribution of the regions 
around, which will teem with a dense population. 

We know that all this region of untold wealth which is 
our heritage, will at no distant day be intersected by 
railroads, its treasures of mineral and vegetable wealth 
attracting to it an enterprising and industrious class of 
inhabitants, while its wonderful developments of sublime 
and beautiful natural features will render it a central 
field of attractive interest for the pleasure seekers of the 
whole world. 



78 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

We know that the health, and the daily comfort and 
convenience of countless millions who are to inhabit the 
towns and cities which are to grow up through all this 
region, may be affected for ages after we are forgotten, by 
the care or the carelessness with which we perform our 
duty in designing their primary arrangement. 

The site selected may comprise within its area natural 
features for whose possession, for esthetic use, old cities 
would gladly expend millions, were it possible for millions 
to purchase them ; it may command views of mountains, 
lakes or rivers, which lovers of the picturesque would 
traverse half the globe to see. The value of such 
possessions to the future town or city which is to arise 
on that spot is no more within the compass of estimate 
than that of the love which has created the beautiful in 
nature, and bestowed upon man the power to enjoy it. 
Yet this priceless opportunity may be lost forever for 
want of an appreciative eye to detect its value. The 
gem may be thrown aside as worthless, because no one 
is at hand to detect its lustre and arrange its setting. 

The duty of laying out the towns is entrusted to a sur- 
veyor, and is comprised in measuring and staking out a 
certain number of streets at stated distances apart, run- 
ning north and south, and east and west, and then prepar- 
ing a " plat " of the same, on which the blocks are divided 
into lots which are numbered, and sold to the highest 
bidder. No regard is paid to the topography of the 
ground ; no reference is had to future interests or neces- 
sities of business or pleasure ; no effort is made to secure 
the preservation of natural features which in time might 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 79 

be invaluable as a means of giving to the place a distinct 
and unique character. Even the certainty that where 
there is life there must also be death, is never recognized 
by such previous provision of a properly arranged place 
of burial as would seem simply consistent with a decent 
sense of propriety. In short, there is not the slightest 
recognition of the existence of such an art as landscape 
architecture. On the line of every railroad which pene- 
trates the new regions of the West this mechanical pro- 
cess of manufacturing and selling towns is going on, and 
year after year they are becoming forever crystalized in 
their angular forms by the advent of purchasers to whom 
the deeds are passed. 

Of course " nobody is to blame." The railroad com- 
panies must regard the interests of the stockholders, 
which require a rapid sale and settlement of the lands, to 
secure which they must be put at the lowest possible price, 
and that can only be done by the wholesale process of 
manufacture which has been described. The first pur- 
chasers are rarely of a class to appreciate any esthetic 
advantages which might be secured, and still less would 
they be willing to pay for possible benefits to their suc- 
cessors, and if purchasers would decline to pay the 
increased cost of having their towns made to order and 
fitted tastefully to the situation, the proprietors must 
provide the machine-made article ; and thus, as in other 
branches of manufacture, the best quality is driven from 
the market. 

Nevertheless the fact remains, that unless a change of 
the present system is brought about, the next century will 



So LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

behold a continued series of towns dotting the whole 
region from the Mississippi to the Pacific constructed on 
the one invariable rectangular pattern. Throughout all 
varieties of natural scenery; the boundless plain; the 
picturesque bluffs, commanding gorgeous views of lake 
or river scenery ; the sublime ranges of mountains, glit- 
tering with snow-clad peaks, smiling with green and 
fertile valleys, frowning with deep canons ; cities, towns 
and villages are to be everywhere the same except in 
size. It is idle to say that " these matters will regulate 
themselves." They have not as yet given such evidence 
of a desire for something better, as is indicated by a con- 
sciousness of present error; as witness San Francisco, 
laid out in squares without the slightest reference to the 
inequalities of her site; witness Denver, laid out in 
squares on a gracefully rounded hill, commanding such a 
mountain view as is worth crossing the Atlantic to see, 
but of which no entire view can be obtained from any 
one point within the city ; whereas if a fine boulevard 
had been arranged circling the hill, it would for all future 
time have furnished so magnificent a drive, and such a 
site for residences, commanding the whole mountain 
chain from Long's to Pike's Peak as would have given a 
distinct character to the city, and would have brought 
more wealth to it — and what is better, more men and 
women of refined taste and culture, — than all the 
temples of mammon which are established forever on 
the site; and witness the multitudes of towns laid out in 
squares on the bottoms and bluffs of the Mississippi and 
Missouri rivers, the founders of which have bequeathed 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 8 1 

to all future generations of inhabitants a legacy of tax- 
ation, to preserve the hideousness of the original outrage 
on common sense and natural beauty, when a proper 
adaptation of the streets and subdivisions to the natural 
shape of the ground, would have made of the now 
unsightly bluffs the most striking and attractive feature 
in the general aspect of the town. 

Only a few years since the beautiful island which 
divides the Falls of St. Anthony could have been secured 
by the thriving city of Minneapolis, which overlooks it, 
for a trifling sum, and would have made a park of a per- 
fectly unique and rarely attractive character, but the 
opportunity was lost and is now never alluded to but 
with regret. 

Day after day is bringing similar opportunities and 
silently offering them for our acceptance. No flaming 
advertisements set forth their merits ; no solicitations are 
made to us to secure them. We have but to reach out 
our hands, and they are given to us " without money and 
without price." But the solemn procession never stops 
or falters in its silent course, and if we miss the auspicious 
hour, the chance is gone forever. We may cast our long- 
ing eyes upon its retreating form, and curse our own 
blindness and stupidity, but it is as utterly beyond recall 
as the day in whose arms it was borne. 

It may be said that it cannot be foretold at the outset 
what is to be the size of a town, or what will constitute 
its principal branches of business or manufacture, without 
which knowledge it is impossible to adapt its arrangement 
to its possible necessities. I have elsewhere conceded 

6 



a2 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

this, in saying that some of the problems involved can 
only be approximately or conjecturally answered. The 
art of town arrangement is one which has as yet had com- 
paratively little opportunity of being reduced to fixed 
laws, and the responsibility devolves upon us in connec- 
tion with the work we have in hand, of developing those 
laws and reducing them so far as may be to a system. 
Ought we not to deem it a privilege that the oppor- 
tunity is afforded us of establishing the principles of an 
art, which in the application we are enabled by modern 
science to make of its practice, should outrank in grandeur, 
and capacity of sublime and beautiful combinations, the 
utmosteffortsof those which have heretofore monopolized 
the title of fine arts ? For surely this is not claiming too 
much for an art whose possible compass may include the 
grandest features of natural scenery, and the noblest 
specimens of architectural skill, as mere ingredients, the 
harmonious blending of which for the development of their 
best effects, is the province of the landscape architect. 

Certainly no people ever before possessed such facilities 
as are placed in our hands for carrying through to a suc- 
cessful result a pre-arranged plan of town construction, 
and no people ever before had such control of all the 
requisite material for the purpose. We have our choice 
of sites in a virgin region, comprising every variety of soil, 
climate, and topographical character. 

Wherever a railroad is opened all the labor-saving 
machinery, and all the comforts, necessities, and luxuries 
of civilized life may be at once introduced. Mills, shops, 
factories, machinery and operatives, with houses for them 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. ?>Z 

to live in, may be delivered to order at any given point, 
and indeed are ready and waiting to present themselves 
at any point which offers sufficient attractions ; and the 
question is certainly worthy of consideration, whether a 
judiciously prepared design, adapted to the natural fea- 
tures of the situation, and, so far as a judgment might be 
formed, to the probable necessities of the inhabitants, 
might not in itself constitute a very powerful attraction. 
It is surely not impossible, on an extended line of rail- 
road, to fix upon localities possessing natural advantages 
of such a character, and bearing such relation to the sur- 
rounding country, as must render their future attainment 
of civic importance almost a matter of certainty, and it 
would certainly tend to promote the object, if provision 
were made for future necessities by the preparation of a 
design of arrangement which should secure the most econo- 
mical and convenient attainment of the objects which are 
of primary importance, and at the same time the best 
esthetic effect of which the natural features were suscepti- 
ble. It certainly would operate as a strong inducement 
to attract immigrants if such a plan were published, and 
they could see for themselves that their future wants and 
comfort had been provided for, and while the enterprising 
and industrious classes who would be the first inhabitants, 
would develop the resources which would give vital energy 
to the population, the provision which had been reasona- 
bly made for taking such advantage of natural features as 
would give to the place a distinct character of refined 
elegance, by exhibiting an appreciation of them which 
would never be attained by a vulgar mind, would not fail 



84 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

to attract as residents or visitors the class of people whose 
culture and intelligence can alone confer upon a commu- 
nity the sterling stamp which gives assured value to 
wealth. 

As a means of giving a generally attractive character to 
the country at large, the importance of securing a tasteful 
arrangement of the smaller towns and rural villages, is 
perhaps of even more importance than that of the large 
cities. 

Sir Uvedale Price, in his Essay on the Picturesque, 
remarks : 

"An obvious and easy method of arranging a village is 
to place the houses on two parallel lines, to make them of 
the same size and shape, and at equal distances from each 
other. Such a methodical arrangement saves all further 
thought and invention ; but it is hardly necessary to say 
that nothing can be more formal or insipid. Other regular 
plans of a better kind have been proposed ; but it seems 
to me that symmetry, which in cities, and generally in all 
the higher styles of architecture produces such grand 
effects, is less suited to humbler scenes and buildings. 

" The characteristic beauties of a village, as distinct 
from a city, are intricacy, variety and play of outline ; and 
whatever is done should be with a view to promote those 
objects. The houses, therefore, should be disposed with 
that view, and should differ as much in their disposition 
from those of a regularly built city, as the trees which are 
meant to have the character of natural groups should from 
those of an avenue. Wherever symmetry and exact uni- 
formity are introduced, those objects which produce a 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 85 

marked intricacy and variety must in general be sacrificed. 
In an avenue, for instance, sudden inequalities of ground, 
with wild groups of trees and bushes, which are the orna- 
ments of forest scenery, would not accord with the pre- 
vailing character. In the same manner where a regular 
street or a square is to be built, all inequalities of ground, 
all old buildings, however picturesque, will injure that 
symmetry of the whole, which must not, except on extra- 
ordinary occasions, be sacrificed to particular detail. 
Now, in a village all details, whether of inequality of 
ground, of trees and bushes, or of old buildings, are not 
only in character, but serve as indications where and in 
what manner new buildings may be placed so as at once 
to promote both variety and connection. 

" There is no scene where neatness and picturesqueness, 
simplicity and intricacy, can be so happily blended as in 
a village." 

These suggestions are applicable to multitudes of cases 
where new villages are to be laid out on sites comprising 
inequalities of surface, or natural features of an attractive 
character which might be made to contribute incalculably 
to the beauty of the town by conferring upon it the 
expression of rural quiet and natural ease, which consti- 
tute the charm of such a place, in distinction from the 
necessary formality of the city. 

But what would Sir Uvedale, or any man of cultivated 
taste, think of the " formality and insipidity " of a western 
village, in which so far as possible every inequality of 
surface is made smooth, every street made straight, the 
houses placed on a line, and the natural growth of trees 



86 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

eradicated in order to replant in formal rows ? And if in 
travelling through the country he found everywhere a 
repetition of the same thing, every village a miniature city, 
differing from its neighbors only in size, or in greater or 
less display of pretentious public or private buildings, 
might he not justly feel the utter deficiency of an appre- 
ciative sense of the truly beautiful in nature, and be 
painfully impressed with the fact that a most important 
element of popular education was entirely ignored ? 

That such is the impression made upon every man of 
cultivated taste is an easily ascertained fact. Of course 
the rule is not without exceptions, and moreover there are 
very few communities in which more or less individuals 
may not be found, who by precept and example are exert- 
ing a constant and powerful influence in educating the 
popular taste to a love of the really beautiful instead of 
mere tawdry or finical displays. 

The apology always offered is the poverty of a new set- 
tlement and the demand for all the means at their dispo- 
sal to meet the expenses of absolute neceessity. 

But all the wind is taken out of that sail by the fact 
that true taste would be far less expensive than the present 
system, because it would leave undisturbed such natural 
features as could be preserved without actual inconven- 
ience, and thus save much of what is commonly the most 
costly of the works of public improvement. The idea 
that an artistic arrangement is necessarily costly, comes 
from the almost universal misapprehension of the meaning 
of the term, which to most minds conveys only the idea 
of elaborate artificial decoration, when in reality the art 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 87 

consists in the development and tasteful adaptation of the 
natural features of the place to the objects to which they 
are to be devoted. The first cost of designing such 
arrangement is more than that of the rectangular system ; 
but the cost of the latter in its execution, and the inci- 
dental expenses attendant on and resulting from it, is 
often tenfold what the former would have been. Is it not 
time that an effort be made to instill correct ideas of what 
constitutes beauty, both by precept and example .»* 

We boast of our system of public education ; but the 
lessons which are learned in school comprise only the 
rudiments of the education which goes to make up the 
popular character. In how many Western towns may 
be seen a huge building which the inhabitants point out 
with pride as the college or university, with some high 
sounding title attached, and which on examination is 
found to be only one wing of an edifice, the rest of which 
is still in the clouds, but which is expected to confer a 
literary odor upon the place, and generally to promote its 
prosperity. The original endowment has been exhausted 
in constructing this fraction of the building, which of 
course is only a deformity while standing by itself. No 
means are left for improving the grounds around it, which 
are generally bare and neglected. Does it never occur 
to principals, teachers or boards of education, that if not 
inculcating a lesson that is directly evil by the example 
of extravagant outlay for an ostentatious object which is 
not half accomplished, they are at least neglecting one of 
the most important and valuable means of educating the 
tastes of their pupils, by suffering them to become 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 



familiar with slovenliness and disregard of all effort to 
give an attractive expression to the place where the work 
of education is conducted? No impression upon the 
youthful mind exerts a more powerful and lasting influ- 
ence than that which is made by daily familiar inter- 
course with scenes of simple natural beauty, and the 
man whose boyhood was passed amid such scenes will 
find that he recurs to them in after life with a keener 
sense of their loveliness, as he contrasts them with the 
magnificence and ostentatious display which mark a more 
artificial condition of life. 

Whatever may be thought, however, of pre-arranged 
designs for proposed towns, the importance of an early 
attention to suburban improvements, is one which cannot 
be too strongly urged upon multitudes of already thriving 
and rapidly growing cities throughout the West. The 
opportunities which are often available of attaining 
possession of tracts of land, by the improvement of 
which the beauty and attractive interest of the city can 
be incalculably increased, while at the same time a lucra- 
tive return is secured in the form of increased valuation 
of taxable property should not be suffered to escape. 

The increase of population and consequent increased 
value of real estate in Western cities is a matter which 
may be said to be almost as certain as the laws of 
nature. Different ratios of growth of course exist, but it 
would be hard to find a town of 10,000 inhabitants that 
is likely to remain stationary and easy to designate many 
which will not stop short of five or ten times that num- 
ber. Every man who has lived a few years in the West 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 89 

can tell of opportunities he has missed of making invest- 
ments in land which would have proved very profitable 
if he had only had faith that the ratio of growth would 
be maintained, yet the infidelity is not overcome, and the 
chances continue to slip by unimproved. 

And so with cities, not one of which but would now 
pay largely to secure opportunities for public improve- 
ments which might once have been had for a song, but 
whose purchase would then have seemed a wild scheme. 

But purchase alone is not enough. If simply bought 
and held for a rise, it may prevent neighboring occupa- 
tion, and thus depreciate in value. Improvements must 
be added of such character as will attract occupants by 
giving evidence that a broad and liberal spirit has been 
exerted in providing for their welfare and comfort. 

Hardly any investment is safer for capitalists than the 
judicious purchase and tasteful improvement of attractive 
sites for suburban additions, and such investments are 
becoming common by individuals and companies in the 
vicinity of many thriving cities, whose governing powers 
should second the enterprise in corresponding spirit by 
extending connecting avenues, and thus as it were appro- 
priating them as integral portions of a grand system of 
elegant embellishment. 

I have endeavored to convey my idea of the scope of 
the art of landscape architecture, and I do not think my 
general premises will be disputed. It cannot be denied 
that one mode of adapting the arrangement of a city, a 
town or a private estate to the natural features of its 
situation, may be preferable to another, as a means of 



90 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 

securing the utmost convenience, in the most economical 
as well as the most attractive and graceful manner. It 
cannot be denied that the infinitely varying circum- 
stances of the topography of different situations, must 
involve a corresponding variety of arrangement in order 
to secure the best for each. It cannot be denied that 
the design of such arrangement demands the exercise of 
skill, judgment and taste, equal at least to that required 
for the architecture of buildings. It seems almost absurd 
that such a course of reasoning should be necessary in 
order to prove the existence of such an art as landscape 
architecture, but while we continue to ignore its existence 
and to go on blindly and without method, in the perform- 
ance of works which obviously should be based directly 
upon its principles — and with such an opportunity as no 
nation ever before enjoyed of developing the theory and 
practice of the art — am I not right in asserting its claims 
and demanding, if only for the sake of our future reputa- 
tion, that they should be recognized .'* 

The statement and solution of the problems involved 
in the practical application of the art, on the scale sug- 
gested would be inappropriate to my present object. 
The scientific discussion of the subject, (if the man 
could be found who is competent to it) would require a 
volume of such compass as would be likely to repel the 
class of readers I have most desired to attract. I have 
purposely avoided such statements of details as may be 
found elsewhere, and have hoped only to call attention 
to the momentous duties devolving upon us, which so far 
as I am aware have never been more than vaguely 



LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE. 91 

alluded to, but for the performance of which we are to be 
held responsible for all coming time; and to prove the 
existence of laws which must be observed if we would 
avoid the errors or secure the advantages whose effects 
for evil or for good are alike incalculable, — alike within 
our control up to the moment of execution, and alike 
unchangeable thenceforth and forever. 



Forest Planting 



Great Plains. 



93 



FOREST PLANTING ON THE 
GREAT PLAINS. 

UBLIC attention has been so frequently called 
of late years to the subject of the wasteful des- 
truction of our native forests, and the necessity 
of adopting energetic measures of relief by means of 
an extended system of forest planting, that it is unneces- 
sary to attempt to set forth its importance in stronger 
language than has been repeatedly used in scientific 
essays, in agricultural addresses, and in congressional 
speeches. 

I propose, therefore, to avail myself of the evidence of 
well known authorities, in proof of the necessity of action 
and of the penalties invoked in delay, referring those who 
wish for more detailed information to the publications 
from whose pages I shall quote, and then offering such 
suggestions as to measures of relief as seem to me to be 
worthy of consideration. 

In the well known " Report on the Trees and Shrubs 
of Massachusetts," by George B. Emerson, published by 
order of the Legislature in 1846, the following passage 
occurs : 

" The importance of the forests as furnishing materials for ship- 
building, house-building, and numerous other arts, is so obvious that 

95 



96 FOREST PLANTING. 

it must occur to every one ; and yet there is danger that in many 
places, from false motives of immediate economy, no provision vi'ill 
be made for the wants of future generations. It is not easy to estimate 
the value of the wood used in house-building. The thousands of tons 
of timber, boards, clapboards and shingles, used in such improvements, 
are not put on record. As to ship-building, we have some data. The 
returns from the various towns in the State, made in 1837, show that 
the average annual value of ships built in the five preceding years was 
$1,370,649. * * * The effect of the wasteful destruction of the for- 
est trees is already visible. A very large proportion of the materials of 
ship-building, house-building, and manufactures, are now brought from 
the other States. Every year we are more dependant on Maine and 
New York, and some of the Southern States, not only for ship-timber 
and lumber for house-building, but for materials for tanning and 
dyeing, carriage-building, basket-making, last-making, furniture, 
agricultural implements, barrel-staves, and wooden-ware of all descrip- 
tions. Even these foreign resources are fast failing us. Within the 
last quarter of a century the forests of Maine and New York, from 
which we draw our largest supplies, have disappeared more rapidly 
than those of Massachusetts ever did. In a quarter of a century more, 
at this rate, the supply -will be entirely cut off." 

The warning embodied in these words was suffered to 
pass unheeded. The quarter of a century has passed and 
the prediction has been more than fulfilled. The rate of 
demand on which it was based has increased to a degree 
which would then have seemed incredible; and while we 
have still to regret the want of any record by which an 
estimate can be formed of the amount of timber annually 
drawn from the forests, or of the probable duration of the 
present sources of supply, yet a consideration of the single 
item of the timber required for railroad construction, 
(which at the time the above was written was not of suffi- 
cient importance to demand notice), and give a moment's 



FOREST PLANTING. 97 

thought to what it must be in the not distant future, we 
cannot fail to be convinced that the work of providing 
for it has become a matter of national importance which 
it were worse than folly to postpone. 

Few persons not concerned in railroad construction 
have any realizing sense of the enormous draft it involves 
upon the natural supplies of timber, and few even of 
those so engaged have considered, as it deserves, the 
problem of the future supply for the vast region which is 
now opened to us between the Missouri and the Rocky 
Mountains, a country rich in various natural resources, 
but utterly destitute of timber, the one thing needful for 
the development of its agricultural and mineral wealth. 

Upwards of 50,000 miles of railroad are now in actual 
use in the United States. 

That their multiplication must go on in a constantly 
increasing ratio is as certain as that the population of 
the country must continue to increase. Every mile of 
railroad requires 2,700 ties, which in the West are mostly 
of oak, cedar or chestnut, and are worth at least fifty 
cents each, or Sij35o P^^ mile. They are generally made 
of comparatively young wood, that is of trees not more 
than eight or ten inches in diameter, requiring only to be 
hewn flat on the upper and under surface. The average 
number of ties cut from a tree of this size is probably 
not more than two ; but allowing it to be three, which it 
cannot Exceed, we find the number of trees required to 
furnish ties for the railroads already constructed to be 
45,000,000. 

7 



98 FOREST PLANTING. 

Estimating the yield of a single acre at 200 trees, 
which is a large allowance for the average yield of native 
woods, it will be seen that the produce of 225,000 acres 
will be required to furnish ties for the existing roads, and 
as the duration of ties is not more than eight years, it 
follows that the above area must be stripped as often as 
that to furnish simply the first article required in its con- 
struction after the road is graded. It is true that a 
better economy is beginning to prevail in some parts of 
the West, where railroad companies have purchased large 
tracts of forest and established mills for sawing the 
timber, so as to avoid the wasteful necessity of using only 
young timber. 

The fact of the adoption of such a measure of economy 
is in itself an evidence of the sense of future necessities 
which impelled it. A consideration of future wants will 
show that much more efficient measures are required 
than the mere economizing of present supplies, in order 
to meet the enormous demand, of which the item I have 
selected for illustration is really one of minor importance, 
but one whose amount can be more readily expressed 
than most others. A moment's reflection will show that 
it comprises but a small portion of what is required for 
railroad use, in comparison with the demand for bridges, 
buildings, fences and rolling stock. And when it is con- 
sidered that all this enormous consumption Is but a 
small fraction of the aggregate required for the infinite 
variety of uses to which it is applied, it does not seem 
surprising that the supply is already approaching an 
estimable period of duration. The following statement 



FOREST PLANTING. 99 

is condensed from a very interesting essay, published in 
the transactions of the Illinois Horticultural Society : 

" Timber, both hard and soft, is rapidly disappearing from our 
forests. At the present rate of denudation it will be but compara- 
tively a short time until its price will be beyond the limits of the 
general industries for which it is now used. European countries 
have been drawing for years upon American forests for a large part of 
their supplies. Over 800,000 acres of timber are annually cut in the 
three great States of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, while but 
150,000 acres are annually planted in all the States. In 1869, 1,750,- 
000,000 feet of lumber were sent to the lake ports of Lake Michigan 
from the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin." 

Col. J. W. Foster, in his very valuable and interesting 
work on the " Mississippi Valley," says : 

" In the United States the destruction of the forest is going on at 
an accelerated pace. The lumber trees of Maine, in accesible posi- 
tions, are nearly exhausted, and twenty years more will accomplish 
the same result with regard to the extensive pineries of Michigan and 
Wisconsin. The white pine is the most valuable lumber tree of 
America. The ease with which it is wrought ; its freedom as com- 
pared with most trees, from shrinking, swelling and warping ; and its 
durability when properly protected by paint, make it the principal 
tree employed in the construction of a vast majority of houses, and 
even fences and sidewalks. To one who realizes how rapidly the 
sources of supply are becoming exhausted, and the prodigality with 
which it is used, it cannot but be disheartening. It is a tree of slow 
growth, and the surface on which it grows, when disrobed, is unfit for 
profitable agriculture. The annual receipts of pine lumber at Chicago 
alone are in excess of 730,000,000 feet, 400,000,000 shingles, and 
24,000,000 of lath. Possessing a material within easy reach and on 
the banks of a canal, known as the Athens limestone, unequalled for 
flagging and building, and having a river whose dredgings are capa- 
ble of conversion into brick, it is a singular fact which strikes every 



FOREST PLANTIA G. 



stranger within her gates, that Chicago should exhibit such an extent 
of wooden tenements and plank sidewalks — structures of the most 
superficial character, which must soon give way to those more solid 
and enduring. The products of the lake pineries are distributed 
over half a continent. From them are built the farm houses of the 
pioneers on the solitary prairies,* and the bridges which span the 
waters of the Kansas and the Platte. 

" The destruction of hard wood timber is going on at a pace 
equally as rapid. The railways require annually in construction and 
maintenance at least 10,000,000 of ties. Nothing strikes the emi- 
grant from the Atlantic slope, on returning after years of absence, so 
forcibly as to see those hills which in his youth were forest crowned, 
now bare and desolate, and the streams in which he was accustomed 
to fish dwindled into mere trickling rills. f The Pacific railroads 
which traverse for long distances the valleys of the Kaw and Platte, 
have consumed in their construction nearly every stick of timber, and 
in four years will have consumed all the firewood. The beautiful 
black walnuts of the Kaw valley, fit for gunstocks and cabinet ware, 
have been remorselessly sacrificed to these base purposes." 

I cannot better conclude the evidence on this branch 
of the subject than by introducing the following report of 
a committee on Forest Culture, which was read at the last 
meeting of the National Agricultural Association in St. 
Louis : 

At the recent meeting of the National Agricultural Association in 

*In journeying last summer on the plains between Lincoln, Neb., and Fort 
Kearney, I asked a new settler at whose house I stopped to dine, where he got 
the lumber for his house, not a tree being in sight. The answer was : " I ordered 
it from Chicago to Lincoln by rail, and hauled it out from there (thirty miles) with 
my team." H. W. S. C. 

tin confirmation of this statement I may mention that on a recent visit to a 
town on the Nashua River in Massachusetts, I was recurring to the delight I used 
to experience when a boy, more than forty years ago, in witnessing the wild scenes 
of the annual freshets when the intervale land on each side of the river was 
converted into an angry flood, when I was astonished to learn that nothing of the 
kind had been known for twenty or thirty years past — doubtless the result of the 
stripping off of the forests, to which Mr. Foster so feelingly alludes. 

H. W. S. C. 



FOREST PLANTING. loi 

St. Louis, a report of which we find in the Missouri Democrat, the 
following striking paper was read, having been prepared by R. S. 
Elliott, Esq. , the well known Industrial Agent of the Kansas Pacific 
Railroad Company : 



The Committee on Forest Culture beg leave to report as follows : 

The forests of the continent are rapidly passing away. Large dis- 
tricts in the Atlantic States are already stripped of their most valuable 
timber. In less than twenty-five years the accessible forests in the 
region of the great lakes, on the upper waters of the Mississippi, and 
in the British possessions adjacent, will be exhausted. The industrial 
progress of the Southern States is consuming trees both deciduous 
and evergreen at an accelerating rate. In the Rocky Mountain 
regions (where the hard woods are unknown) the pines, spruces and 
cedars are disappearing before the farmer, the miner, the architect 
and the railroad builder. On the Pacific coast, the immense home 
demand, ever increasing, together with the exportations to England, 
France, Australia, China, Japan, South America, Mexico and the 
Pacific Islands foretell the exhaustion of the California timber trees 
in twenty years ; and those available in Oregon and regions north- 
ward within a comparatively brief period. 

The demand for the product of the forest constantly increases. 
The supply constantly, and in a growing ratio, diminishes, and prices 
constantly augment. The causes now in operation, and daily gaining 
Strength, can have but one effect, that of exhausting all the available 
sources of supply within the lives of persons now in existence. 

This appalling prospect, the view of which becomes more vivid the 
more it is studied, should arouse the farmers, land-owners and legis- 
lators. It is vital to the future welfare of our people that the repro- 
duction of the forests should at once begin, not on a small scale or in 
few localities, but in large measures and co-extensive with our settle- 
ments. A broad statesmanship, in our national and State Legislature, 
should at once take up the subject, and deal with it year by year until 
the great work shall be adequately begun. 



I02 FOREST PLANTING. 

The few and hesitating experiments in isolated localities, which 
have been made in the growing of forest trees, have no significance as 
far as the general supply of future wants is concerned. But they are 
of inestimable value in so far as they teach the ease and comparative 
rapidity with which forest trees, useful to the farm, to the workshop 
and to the railroad, may be produced ; and in so far as they show 
that the agricultural men of the country have already (in advance of 
the men in high political life), appreciated the necessities of the 
present and the future. They are also of value in demonstrating that, 
however remote the profit of forest culture may have been heretofore 
considered, it is yet true that the artificial plantation may in a very 
few years, by judicious planting at first, be made to yield current 
returns equal to the cost of planting and care. 

Modifications and ameliorations of climate, due to the destruction 
or the extension of forests, have begun to enlist serious consideration. 
There can be no doubt of the beneficial influence of the forest areas 
equal in aggregate to one-fourth or one-third of the entire area of 
any extensive region. But however important climate effects may be 
in this connection — however desirable it may be that the crops and 
animal life of the farm should enjoy the benefits of forest influences 
and shelter, the need of extensive forest planting is important enough 
without taking into consideration its effect on atmospheric movements, 
temperature and rainfall. The store, the dwelling, the shop, the 
factory, the railroad, the wharf, the warehouse — all these demand 
action ; demand it in the name of domestic life, of farm economy, of 
commerce, of all the arts of our civilization. "What we shall save in 
climate by preserving forest areas, or gain by their extension, is just 
so much to be enjoyed in addition to other compensations. The less 
violent sweep of the winds in Illinois, as compared with forty or fifty 
years ago, due to the obstruction caused by buildings, hedges, fences, 
orchards, artificial groves, and wind-breaks on her prairies, speak to 
the understanding of plain men more forcibly than any language we 
could use. 

There may be those who regard forest planting as a work of 
mystery and grandeur, beyond the reach of common farmer. This is 



FOREST PLANTING. 103 

a mistaken view. Nearly all the most important deciduous trees may 
be grown from seed as readily as Indian corn. Of many species the 
seed may be sown broadcast and harrowed in, if the planter prefers 
to use the seed lavishly rather than give more care. The seeds of 
many trees may be planted either in the fall or spring, as may be 
most convenient. Some of the softer wooded trees grow from cuttings 
as readily as the grape ; and with most deciduous trees, the seeds or 
cuttings may, if desired, be at once planted where the trees are to 
stand. Nor need the most unlettered farmer deny himself the pleasure 
and profit of the conifers and evergreens. The plants, furnished at 
prices which are insignificant in comparison with their value, are 
abundant at reliable nurseries, and with the simple precaution of 
keeping the roots moist, and proper care in planting, are as sure to 
grow as any other tree or shrub. 

No part of the earth is blessed with a greater variety of useful trees, 
both of the hard and soft wooded kinds, than the United States ; and 
these native trees can all be readily grown in artificial plantations. 
It is not alone the pines and spruces and cedars that make up our 
valuable timber. The harder wooded trees — the ash, the oak, the 
hickories, the maples, the walnuts and the chestnuts — of which we 
have heretofore been so lavish, have a value in the arts that no figures 
can estimate. They may be said to be essential to the continuance of 
our present civilization. New forests of these trees must be grown, 
or our grandchildren must depart from our modes of life. West of 
longitude 100 degrees from Greenwich, the material of a common 
wagon does not grow on the continent, and we are fast exhausting it 
east of that meridian. Ohio and Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri, 
have girdled and burnt hard wood trees that to-day would be worth 
hundreds of millions of dollars. If failing springs and protracted 
drouths and extremes of temperature suggest replanting, their people 
may safely rely on a future market, more certain than for any other 
product of the soil. 

To carry out the views embodied in this report, your committee 
submit the following resolutions for adoption by this National Agri- 
cultural Congress. John A. Warden, \ 

R. S. Elliott, >■ Committee. 



I04 FOREST PLANTING, 



THE REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 

Resolved, i. That we recommend farmers throughout the United 
States to plant with trees their hilly or other waste lands, and at least 
ten per cent, of their farms with, trees, in such a manner as to provide 
shelter belts or clumps, and rapid growth and useful timber. 

2. That we solicit the legislatures of the several States to pass laws 
providing bounties for planting useful trees, encouraging the planting 
of the highways, and for the provision of State nurseries of young 
timber trees ; and also the appointment of an Arbor Day for the 
annual planting of trees, as has already been done in the State of 
Nebraska. 

3. That we ask our Congress of the United States to require, so 
far as practicable, that hereafter railroad companies and settlers 
receiving the benefit of the homestead and other acts donating lands, 
shall plant with timber trees one-tenth of the lands so donated. 

Concerning the influence of forests on temperature, 
humidity, etc., I make the following extracts from Marsh's 
" Man and Nature": 

"Sir John F. W. Herschel enumerates among 'the influences 
unfavorable to rain,' ' absence of vegetation, especially of trees,' and 
says: ' This is no doubt one of the reasons of the extreme aridity of 
Spain. The hatred of a Spaniard toward a tree is proverbial. Many 
districts in France have been materially injured by denudation ; and 
on the other hand, rain has become more frequent in Egypt since the ' 
more vigorous cultivation of the palm tree.' " 

Barth presents the following view of the subject : 
" The ground in the forest, as well as the atmospheric stratum over 
it, continues humid after the woodless districts have lost their moist- 
ure ; and the air charged with the humidity drawn from them, is 
usually carried away by the winds before it has deposited itself in a 
condensed form on the earth. Trees constantly transpire through 
their leaves a great quantity of moisture, which they partly absorb 
again by the same organs, while the greater part of their supply is 



FOREST PLANTING. 105 

pumped up through their widely ramifying roots from considerable 
depths in the ground. Thus a constant evaporation is pi'oduced 
which keeps the forest atmosphere moist even in long droughts, when 
all other sources of humidity in the forest itself are dried up. The 
warm, moist currents of air which come from other regions are cooled 
as they approach the wood by its less heated atmosphere, and obliged 
to let fall the humidity with which they are charged. The woods 
contribute to the same effect by mechanically impeding the motion of 
fog and rain cloud, whose particles are thus accumulated and con- 
densed to rain. The forest thus has greater power than the open 
ground to retain within its own limits already existing humidity, and 
to preserve it, and it attracts and collects that which the wind brings 
it from elsewhere, and forces it to deposit itself as rain or other pre- 
cipitation. In consequence of these relations of the forest to humidity 
it follows that wooded districts have both more frequent and more 
abundant rain, and in general are more humid than woodless regions ; 
for what is true of the woods themselves in this respect, is true also 
of the open country in their neighborhood, which in consequence of 
the ready mobility of the air and its constant changes, receives a share 
of the characteristics of the forest atmosphere, coolness and moisture 
When the districts stripped of trees have long been deprived of rain 
and dew, and the grass and fruits of the field are ready to wither, the 
grounds which are surrounded by woods are green and flourishing. 
By night they are refreshed with dew, which is never wanting in the 
moist air of the forest, and in due season they are watered by a 
beneficent shower or a mist which rolls slowly over them." 

Asbjornson, after adducing the familiar theoretical 
arguments on this point, adds : 

"The rainless territories in Peru and North Africa establish this 
conclusion, and numerous other examples show that woods exert an 
influence in producing rain, and that rain fails where they are want- 
ing — for many countries have, by the destruction of the forests, been 
deprived of rain, moisture, springs and watercourses, which are 
necessary for vegetable growth. In Palestine, and many other parts 



io6 FOREST PLANTING. 

of Asia and Northern Africa, which in ancient times were the 
granaries of Europe, fertile and populous, similar consequences have 
been experienced. These lands are now deserts, and it is the destruc- 
tion of the forests alone which has produced this desolation. In 
Southern France many districts have from the same cause become 
barren wastes of stone, and the cultivation of the vine and olive has 
suffered severely since the baring of the neighboring mountains. On 
the other hand, examples of the beneficial influence of planting and 
restoring the woods are not wanting. In Scotland, where many miles 
square have been planted with trees, this effect has been manifest, and 
similar observations have been made in several places in Southern 
France." 

Monestier Savignat arrives at this conclusion : 

" Forests on the one hand diminish evaporation ; on the other they 
act on the atmosphere as refrigerating causes. The second scale of 
the balance predominates over the other, for it is established that in 
wooded countries it rains oftener, and that the quantity of rain being 
equal, they are more humid." 

Boussingault, whose observations on the drying up of 
lakes and springs, from the destruction of the woods in 
tropical America, have often been cited as conclusive 
proof that the quantity of rain was thereby diminished, 
after examining the question with much care, remarks : 

" In my judgment it is settled that very large clearings must dimin- 
ish the annual fall of rain in a country." 

Numerous other authorities might be cited in support 
of the proposition that forests tend to produce rain; but 
though the arguments of the advocates of this doctrine 
are very plausible, not to say convincing, their opinions 
are rather a priori conclusions from general meteorological 
laws, than deductions from facts of observation, and i. 



FOREST PLANTING. T07 

is remarkable that there is so little direct evidence on 
the subject. 

The effect of the forest on precipitation then is not 
free from doubt, and we cannot positively affirm that the 
total annual quantity of rain is diminished or increased 
by the destruction of the woods, though both theoretical 
considerations and the balance of testimony strongly 
favor the opinion that more rain falls in wooded than in 
open countries. One important conclusion, at least, upon 
the meteorological influence of forests is certain and 
indisputed: the proposition, namely, that within their own 
limits and near their own borders, they maintain a more 
uniform degree of humidity in the atmosphere than is 
observable in cleared grounds. Scarcely less can it be 
questioned that they promote the frequency of showers, 
and if they do not augment the amount of precipitation, 
they equalize its distribution through the diff'erent 
seasons. 

It is frequently asserted by dwellers upon the Plains 
that a perceptible change has taken place in the climate 
since the introduction of railroads and the settlement of 
the small portion of territory already occupied. Intelli- 
gent men express their full conviction that rainfalls are 
more frequent, and the climate generally is less liable to 
sudden changes and extreme variations than formerly. 
It is hardly within bounds of possibility, however, that 
any essential change can have been eff"ected by the 
settlement of a portion so insignificant in comparison 
with the whole area. The following interesting extract 
from a letter I have recently received from Mr. Wm. N. 



Io8 FOREST FLAA TING. 

Byers, Editor of the Rocky Mountain News, in reply to 
an inquiry on this subject, probably furnishes the most 
rational explanation of the belief which is frequently 
expressed. Few men have had as good opportunities of 
observation as Mr. Byers, as he has lived for more than 
twenty years between the Missouri and the Pacific; for 
a very large portion of the time in the open air, and since 
1856, with the exception of occasional interruptions, has 
been furnishing meteorological reports to the Smithsonian 
Institute. As the records have to be made daily, and at 
certain hours, the effect could hardly fail to systematize 
his observations and give much greater weight to his 
opinion than to that of a merely casual observer. 

It will be seen that his idea of the effect of forest 
planting, in modifying the climate by checking the winds, 
whose "exhaustive power" is a chief cause of the aridity 
of the Plains, corresponds with that which I have else- 
where expressed. He admits that wherever trees are 
planted and nourished into mature growth, " they ameli- 
orate the climatic condition immediately around them," 
and that the protection they afford arrests and preserves 
humidity by checking evaporation. This corresponds 
with the conclusions I have elsewhere quoted, viz: "that 
within their own limits and near their own borders they 
maintain a more uniform degree of humidity than is 
observed in cleared grounds." If this is true, it follows 
that a sufficient proportion of forest would secure the 
desired effect, even though no increase was wrought in 
the annual amount of rainfall." 

"With twenty years observation on the Plains I unhesitatingly give 



FOREST PLANTING. 109 

it as my opinion that there is no change in their climatic laws. I 
think there is a perceptible but irregular cycle of years, progressing 
from extreme wet to extreme dry, and the reverse, but nothing else. 
I account for the "mere opinion of old settlers," to which you refer, 
as follows : These old settlers came from the East — from moist, and, 
more or less, humid climate ; ordinarily having frequent and often 
excessive rains ; a dense, sticky soil. The change to a country of 
exact opposites was very impressive. They noticed it most the first 
year because so different. Memories of the old were fresh ; inconve- 
niences of the new exaggerated. As the former faded from year to 
year, the latter were surmounted one by one. Gradually he adapted 
himself to the new order of things. Ditches, water, irrigation, bring 
verdure. Trees spring up ; they ameliorate the climatic condition 
immediately around. With shade, and green grass and gurgling 
streams, the "old settler's" discomforts disappear as the memories of 
former years fade in oblivion. Hence his opinion, in which he is as 
honest as though it was a fact. 

" I know how common it is. I meet the assertion or the inquiry 
almost every day. In vain do I cite the history of Eastern lands, 
where they irrigate to-day as they did three thousand years ago, else 
gather no harvest ; of Western South America ; of Mexico, old and 
new ; of California, peopled by our own citizens, where they have 
suffered for two years the worst droughts in twenty-four. 

" Forest planting will modify and ameliorate our climate, because, 
to start the forest, water must be provided. The same supply that 
nourishes the tree, brings grass or other verdure. The former breaks 
the wind (one day's wind is more exhaustive of moisture than three 
day's sun), the latter carpets and protects the earth. The little rain 
that falls, instead of being immediately absorbed by and from the 
bare, sun-parched and wind-lashed earth, goes to the tree and grass 
roots, and for hours or days will cool the shaded air. The tree 
requires less water the second than it does the first year. Its demands 
diminish year by year, until finally its roots will have struck deep 
enough to supply all its wants. The water supply that will enable 
the planting of an acre of forest trees this year may safely be 



no FOREST PLANTING. 

extended to half an acre more next year ; to an additional three- 
quarters of an acre the next, and so on. Could forest planting be 
made general it might in time affect the laws of climate over a wide 
area — might possibly increase perceptibly the rain fall — but I have 
no hope of that. The farmer, or the neighborhood, may greatly 
improve his or their surroundings, but the general laws of the universe 
can hardly be changed by man's feeble hand. 

" I have traveled nearly a thousand miles south of here among 
fields and vineyards that have been cultivated for three hundred 
years ; have witnessed their wonderful productiveness and seen above 
and beyond the irrigating ditches that watered them the most 
parched and utter barrenness. Even the mountain sides produce no 
trees. The valleys are densely populated, and if rain was to follow 
man, certainly it would have come to ble.ss them." 

Without seeking further evidence, or discussing the 
question, whether the effect of forests is to create a 
change of climate by electrical or chemical action, or is 
merely mechanical, it is obvious that they do render cul- 
tivation possible, and exert an influence in retaining 
humidity in their immediate vicinity. It follows that the 
extent of this influence will be proportionate to that of 
the area on which forest growth is secured, and this is 
the most encouraging fact connected with the subject, 
since it relieves us of the appalling necessity of waiting 
till a large portion of the whole area is covered with 
forest before hoping for a perceptible change. 

It is hardly possible for the mind to grasp the idea of 
so vast an extent as is comprised in the area of the great 
Plains; and it is idle to talk of attempting within any 
appreciable time to plant trees enough on a tract which 
in its transverse section is five hundred miles across, to 
produce a climatic change. But it is certain that every 



FOREST PLANTING. iii 

such improvement brings its own reward in its immediate 
vicinity, and the only successful solution of the problem 
of converting the plains into arable and habitable lands, 
is through the medium of forest planting. Settlement 
and civilization are absolutely impossible without pro- 
viding timber for the wants of the settlers. Railroads 
may be built as the Pacific railroads have been, by the 
constant efforts of construction trains in bringing forward 
supplies from the rear. But it has already been shown 
that the natural supplies of the older regions are running 
short of the demands upon them, and it is idle to sup- 
pose that they can be relied upon for the wants of a new 
country nearly as large as the whole region between the 
Mississippi and the Atlantic coast, which is entirely bare 
of trees. But even if it could do so, the cost of trans- 
portation of all the timber required for the infinite var- 
iety of purposes of domestic use, to say nothing of fuel, 
would be such as to prevent the possibility of settlement 
except in the comparatively few localities where an 
investment of capital was warranted by special objects. 
The class of pioneers who are usually the first to develop 
the agricultural wealth of a new country, and whose 
labor and productions are the foundation of its pros- 
perity, could gain no foothold in a region which, whatever 
might be the capacity of its soil, is destitute of the timber 
which ' is essential to its settlement and cultivation. 
Until this want is supplied, therefore, the region in ques- 
tion must form a natural barrier, or line of separation, 
instead of a connecting line between the eastern and the 
western portions of the country, contributing by its 



112 FOREST PLANTING. 

resources and its wants to the active commercial inter- 
course of each. 

How much of the region is capable of growing timber 
at all ; how much of it requires irrigation to insure suc- 
cessful culture, and how much consists of alkaline depos- 
its on which no culture is possible, are questions to which 
only vague and indefinite replies can yet be made. But 
of this simple fact we may be assured, that very exten- 
sive tracts, which are capable of forest culture, and which 
at present may be said to possess no intrinsic value, are 
now accessible by the Pacific railroads. 

We know that the belt of prairie has its greatest trans- 
verse expansion in the Missouri basin, and that east of 
the meridian of Fort Laramie, the prairies are covered 
with rich grasses adapted to pasturage, which for an 
unknown period have supported countless herds of 
bison. 

Where such grasses will grow, trees will grow, and with 
the growth of trees in sufficient quantity will come the 
increase of humidity and the modification of the storms, 
floods and other excesses of natural phenomena, which 
are fatal to the success of extended agricultural opera- 
tions. The first step toward the settlement of the coun- 
try, therefore, should be the planting of tracts of forest 
wherever it is practicable along the line of railroad, or 
elsewhere ; and the first thing to be ascertained is, what 
varieties of trees are best adapted to such culture. 
Probably it may be impossible at first to grow some of 
the varieties most desirable for timber ; but if we cannot 
have what we would, let us have those we can. Plant 



FOREST PLANTING. 113 

those that will grow, and in time they will serve as 
screens for more valuable kinds, as is done on the sea 
shore, where the worthless silver poplar (abele) will grow 
luxuriantly and in a few years form a screen behind which 
more delicate deciduous and evergreen trees will grow as 
readily as if they were unaware of the vicinity of the 
ocean. 

The labors of Mr. R. S. Elliott, Industrial Agent of 
the Kansas Pacific Railroad, have thrown much light 
upon the subject, and his own report of them contains 
so much interesting and valuable information which 
ought to be widely disseminated, that I insert the whole 
of it. I visited Mr. Elliott's nurseries in the summer of 
187 1, and made a careful examination of all the varieties 
of trees under culture, and my observations enable me 
fully to corroborate his interesting statements. 



114 FOREST PLANTING. 



EXPERIMENTS IN CULTIVATION ON THE PLAINS 

ALONG THE LINE OF THE KANSAS 

PACIFIC RAILWAY. 

BY R. S. ELLIOTT. 
[Published in Prof. Hayden's Geological Report.] 

The treeless plains between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers may 
be said to extend from the ninety-seventh meridian of longitude to 
the Rocky Mountains. North of the Platte and south of the 
Arkansas the general features of the country are similar, but for the 
purpose of this report we need only have in view the region between 
the rivers. Its drainage is mainly through the Kansas River, the 
numerous affluents of which afford, in pools or currents, the water- 
supplies which have enabled the buifalo to sustain himself in all its 
parts. Along some of the streams there are occasional groves and 
fringes of timber — ash, box-elder, cedar, cherry, cottonwood, elm, 
hackberry, oak, plum, walnut, and willow ; some of the species per- 
sistent to the mountains, but not in numbers or distribution sufficient 
to change the character of the country from that of open, treeless 
plains, rising gradually from about i,ooo feet above the level of 
the sea at the ninety-seventh meridian to more than 5,000 feet at 
Denver. 

There is great uniformity in the surface of this immense inclined 
plane. The face of the country presents a series of gentle undula- 
tions, but there are no points of much elevation above the general 
surface, nor any great depressions below it. The geology seems to 
be in harmony with the surface features, as the earths and rocks of 
this vast region, five hundred miles in width, range from Lower 
Cretaceous, (Mudge,) on its eastern border, to the later Tertiaries of 
the Lake period, (Hayden and Newberry,) near the base of the 
mountains. 



FOREST PLANTING. 115 

Open on the north to the arctic circle, and on the south to the Rio 
Grande, with no mountain ranges or extensive forests to check atmos- 
pheric movements, the great plains must necessarily be swept by winds 
as freely as the ocean. In spring and summer the winds from the 
southward are most prevalent. In winter the winds are more fre- 
quent from the northward. In the autumn they are apt to be more 
variable, and at the same time of more gentle character. Wind from 
the west is seldom observed. The winds are often strong, but they 
cannot be classed with destructive gales. They come with a steady 
pressure, which may cause a frail building to tremble, but will not 
overturn it. Tornadoes and hurricanes seem to be unknown. There 
is no record or tradition of such manifestations. Local thunder- 
storms and heavy rains, over comparatively limited districts, are 
experienced as detached phenomena, but are apt to be incidents of a 
storm covering a large area, and moving eastward. Days of com- 
parative calm and of gentle breezes often occur, when, perhaps, for a 
week the windmill is unable to work the pump at the water station, 
but total rest of the atmosphere, except for brief periods, is rare. The 
climate is propitious to health and to comfort ; for although changes 
of temperature are at times sudden and considerable, yet injurious 
results seldom follow them. 

As we pass westward from the ninety-seventh meridian, the atmos- 
phere is observed to be more arid. Within two hundred miles of the 
mountains, the deposition of dew is at times so light as to be of little' 
or no service to the vegetation. The annual rainfall is also less as 
we go westward, decreasing nearly in the ratio of distance until the 
divide is reached at and southwest from Cedar Point, in which vicinity 
there is supposed to be more rain than eastward in the plains or 
westward nearer the foot-hills. The natural effect of decreasing pre- 
cipitation and increasing aridity is in some degree shown in the 
vegetation. The grama and buffalo grasses continue, together with 
the sunflower, solanum, euphorbia, and other plants, which are vigor- 
ous, nearly if not quite as far east as the ninety-seventh meridian ; 
but we find that the blue-joint grass of Central and Eastern Kansas 
is less abundant, and that cleome, iponiea^ cactus, artemisia, etc., enter 



Ii6 FOREST PLANTING. 

on the more arid scene as if in their chosen home. But no consider- 
able part of the plains between the Platte and the Arkansas is so arid 
as to be destitute of vegetation, although the change in the flora 
is rather distinctly marked as we pass from the middle of Kansas 
westward. 

Like any other extensive area, the plains exhibit a variety of soils, 
but the fertile greatly exceed in extent the unfertile districts. Loam, 
with greater or less mixture of vegetable matter, is the prevailing soil, 
the proportions of sands and clays differing greatly in different local- 
ities. The patches of sand or gravel of meager fertility, or of alkaline 
clays, unsuited to general plant growth, are very small in proportion 
to the whole area, and with irrigation in some parts, and without it in 
others, the entire region would prove, on trial, to be productive, with 
as small a share of waste land as some of the most favored States. 
The value of the plains for production is more affected by peculiar- 
ities of climate than by poverty of soil. 

EXPERIMENTS IN CULTIVATION ORDERED. 

Twenty years ago the lands available for general agriculture west 
of the State of Missouri were supposed to lie in a belt of not more 
than one hundred miles in width, extending north and south. Even 
when the Territory of Kansas was organized, the whole area west of 
Missouri and east of the mountains was of doubtful value in public 
estimation ; and emigration was stimulated by political considerations 
rather than by correct knowledge or appreciation of the country. 
Beyond the narrow belt, and stretching away to the mountains, was 
the unfruitful waste, as popularly estimated. Its possible future use- 
fulness for pastoral pui-poses had been at times suggested, but the 
day for its actual occupancy, if ever to arrive, was regarded as far 
distant. The settlers, however, soon ventured beyond the supposed 
boundary of productiveness ; and as they increased in numbers, the 
area of available lands was found to extend itself westward, as if to 
meet their necessities. The construction of the railway brought 
increased emigration, more accurate knowledge of the resources of 
the country, and a firmer confidence in its future. By 1870 settle- 



FOREST PLANTING. 



117 



ments had stretched along the railway to points more than two 
hundred miles west from the State of Missouri. The pioneer had 
passed the boundary of the traditional " desert " at the ninety-seventh 
meridian, and in his march westward had found that the desert, like 
its own mirage, receded before him. Was his march to continue ; 
and how much farther could soil, temperature, and rainfall be relied 
on to reward cultivation ? These questions, important to the interests 
of the general public, as well as of the railway, could best be 
answered by experiments, and the directors of the company ordered 
some such experiments to be made. 

In the spring of 1870, gardens were made at some of the stations, 
at distances between two hundred and thirty-nine and three hundred 
and seventy-six miles west of Kansas City ; the farthest westward 
being at Carlyle Station, 2,948 feet above the level of the sea. Seeds 
tried in these gardens germinated well, and the plants, with rude and 
imperfect culture, grew encouragingly. The results were satisfactory, 
although the destruction by insects was greatly beyond anticipation. 
Irish potatoes, for example, made vigorous growth, yet about the time 
of blooming were destroyed by a species of blister-beetle, (Epicauta 
corvina, Riley,) which proved to be a more formidable enemy than 
even the Colorado potato-bug. Spring wheat matured merchantable 
grain at Carlyle. 

In the summer and fall of 1870 a few acres were broken at each of 
the three following stations, on the Kansas Pacific Railway, distant 
from Kansas City and above the level of the sea as follows : 



Stations. 


West from Kansas 
City. 


Above sea- 
level. 


"Wilson, (now Bosland) 


Miles. 

239 
302 
422 


Feet. 
1,586 


Ellis _ - 


2,019 


Pond Creek 


3,175 







These places are in the western half of the State of Kansas. All 



ii8 FOREST PLANTING. 

are in the present buffalo range ; all are in the region of short grasses ; 
all are in the open, treeless plains, beyond the limits heretofore 
assigned to settlements. 

Wheat, rye and barley were sown at each of these stations in the 
fall of 1870 ; at Pond Creek, September 28 ; at Ellis, October 20 ; 
and at Wilson, November 1 1. At Pond Creek the rye grew finely 
and matured a fair crop ; the wheat and barley were partially winter- 
killed, but the surviving plants made heads of the usual length, well 
filled with grain of good size and quality. At Ellis the promise of all 
the grains was excellent until the 1st of June, when a hailstorm of 
unusual severity prostrated every stem. At Wilson the grains all did 
well. The President a d the Secretary of the Missouri State Board 
of Agriculture (who, in company with members of the board, visited 
the stations in June) say in their report : " We found wheat, rye, and 
barley sown November 11, 1870, (at Wilson,) equal to if not beyond 
the average crop of any part of the Union." And of Pond Creek 
they say : " The rye, sown 28th of September, on raw ground, would 
rate as a good crop in Missouri or Illinois ; and of the winter wheat 
and barley, the plants which had survived the winter were heading 
out finely. Rye may be regarded as a valuable crop to the west line 
of Kansas (without irrigation) ; and further trials of wheat and 
barley of the more hardy kinds will, in all probability, be successful." 

Trials of grass seeds at the stations named have shown that 
sorghum, lucerne, timothy, clover and Hungarian grass may be 
regarded as future forage crops on the plains ; the first and last being 
the most promising. Maize can be grown for fodder at each of the 
stations, and for its grain at Wilson and Ellis. At Pond Creek, 
sorghum made a good length of stalk and matured fine panicles of 
seeds. At Ellis and Wilson the stalks reached a height of nine to 
ten feet, and abundance of seeds were matured. This plant will be 
found to be of great value in Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado, 
if its usefulness for fodder has not been greatly overrated. In the dry 
atmosphere of the plains, the stalks could probably be dried so as to 
avoid the souring of the juice, on which account, in Illinois, an objec- 
tion has been raised to its use as a fodder-plant. 



FOREST PLANTING. 1 19 



TREE-SEEDS. 

There were planted at Wilson tree-seeds as follows : 

Fall of 1870. — Ailantus, chestnut, oak, peach, pecan, pifion. 

Spring of 1871. — Ailantus, catalpa, elm, locust, honey-locust, sil- 
ver-maple, osage-orange, walnut. 

All these seeds, except the pifion, (nut-pine of New Mexico, Pinus 
edulis,) have done remarkably well. 

Seeds of ailantus, catalpa, locust, honey-locust and osage-orange 
were tried at Ellis with encouraging prospects, when most of the 
seedling trees were destroyed by the hailstorm of the ist of June. 
Seeds of ailantus, sown broadcast during the first week in June, came 
up well, and the little trees came safely through the summer. 

Seeds of ailantus sown at Pond Creek resulted in a moderate 
growth of trees, of which a large proportion survived the summer. 

The experiments with tree-seeds, though very limited, have sufficed 
to show that trees may be grown from seed without irrigation, to the 
west line of Kansas, and in all probability to the base of the 
mountains. 

Cuttings of cotton-wood, Lombardy and white poplar, and white 
and golden willow, were tried at Wilson and did well in that locality. 
Cuttings of cotton-wood and the willows were also tried at Ellis with 
a measure of success. 

TRANSPLANTED TREES. 

Trials were made at Wilson of transplanted trees of the following 
kinds : 

EVERGREENS. 

White pine - Pinus strobus. 

Scotch pine P- sylvestris. 

Austrian pine P. Austriaca. 

Corsican pine P. Laricio. 

Norway spruce _ Abies excelsa. 

Red cedar Juniperus Virginiana. 



FOREST PLANTING. 



DESIDUOUS. 

Ailantus - A. glandulosa. 

Ash F^-axinus Americana. 

Box-elder .Negundo aceroides. 

Catalpa C. bignonoides. 

Chestnut Castanea vesca. 

Cotton-wood Populus monilifera. 

Elm. _ Ulmus Americana. 

Honey-locust _ Gleditschia triacanthus, 

European larch Larix Europea. 

Linden Tilia Americana 

Silver-maple __ Acer dasycarpum. 

Sycamore-maple - A. pseudo-platanus. 

Osage-orange Madura aurantiaca. 

Lombardy poplar Populus dilatata. 

White poplar- _ _ -P. alba. 

Tulip tree Liriodendron iulipifera. 

White willow _ Salix alba. 

Golden willow ..Salix alba (var). 

Walnut Juglans nigra. 

The foregoing trees, whether transplanted or from seeds or cuttings, 
have done well at Wilson, making growth equal to what is usual in 
Eastern Missouri or Illinois. Rev. E. Gale, one of the regents of 
Kansas State Agricultural College, examined the trees on the i8th of 
August, and reported measurements as follows : 

From Seed. — Ailantus, 24 to 30 inches ; catalpa, 3 to 12 inches; 
chestnut, 4 to 12 inches ; elm, 10 to 20 inches ; locust, 36 to 48 inches ; 
honey-locust, 16 to 24 inches ; silver-maple, 12 to 24 inches ; oak, 
8 to 10 inches ; osage-orange, 12 to 30 inches ; peach, 24 to 30 inches ; 
pecan, 4 to 9 inches ; walnut, 10 to 12 inches. 

From Cuttings. — White poplar, 12 to 27 inches; Lombardy 
poplar, 24 to 36 inches ; cotton-wood, 18 to 24 inches ; white willow, 
24 to 36 inches. 

Transplanted. — Ailantus, 48 to 60 inches; ash, 10 to 16 inches; 



FOREST PLANTING. 1 21 

box-elder, 36 to 40 inches ; catalpa, 12 to 24 inches; chestnut, 8 to 
14 inches ; cotton-wood, 36 to 60 inches ; elm, 20 to 30 inches ; honey- 
locust, 36 to 42 inches ; larch, 6 to 12 inches ; linden, 9 to 18 inches ; 
silver-maple, 24 to 30 inches ; sycamore-maple, 12 to 24 inches ; 
osage-orange, 12 to 36 inches ; peach, 30 to 36 inches ; white poplar, 
24 to 36 inches ; Lombardy poplar, 24 to 36 inches ; tulip-tree, 8 to 
10 inches ; willows, 36 to 48 inches ; walnut, 6 to 8 inches. 

Mr. Gale says : " The evergreens have nearly all lived, and have 
made a growth of from 4 to 8 inches. All have done well. There 
is certainly nothing in the appearance of these trees to discourage the 
planting of evergreens in Kansas." It is proper to state that the cat- 
alpa-seed was sown broadcast on ground which had been broken the 
November previous, and was not replowed. Seedling walnuts were 
grown by putting the seed under fresh turned sod. None of the trees 
had the care or cultivation usual in nurseries. 

At Ellis the same transplanted trees were tried as at Wilson, except 
red cedar and cotton-wood. The result was encouraging, although 
the chestnut, larch and Norway spruce may be said to have failed on 
this first trial, and some others were less vigorous than at Wilson. 
The hailstorm of ist June greatly damaged the trees, cutting off the 
leaves and shoots and splitting the bark ; yet a large portion 'of the 
deciduous class made a fair growth, and about 50 per cent, of the 
pines survived. Of ailantus, ash, catalpa, honey-locust and white 
poplar planted at Ellis, every tree survived, and nearly all of the box- 
elder, elm, silver-maple, osage-orange, Lombardy poplar and black 
walnut. 

At Pond Creek the growth of some kinds of trees was highly 
encouraging. Ailantus, ash, box-elder, catalpa, honey-locust and 
osage-orange have done best, and promise well for the future. Elm 
and black walnut made moderate growth, and seem to have estab- 
lished themselves. The willows, the poplars, and the silver-maple 
did not come up to expectation. European larch and most of the 
evergreens failed ; but a few of the pines lived through the summer, 
and in another season will probably do well. The trees at Pond 
Creek are in one of the most forbidding spots of all the plains. At 



FOREST PLANTING. 



the new station, Wallace, about two miles eastward, and on higher 
ground but with different soil, silver-maple and Lombardy poplar 
seem to do much better than at Pond Creek. 

NO IRRIGATION, 

The experiments were all without irrigation. Except to soak some 
of the seeds, or to puddle the roots of the trees as they were set out, 
not one drop of water was applied by human agency. The trees had 
not the benefit of good care and cultivation ; they were not aided by 
mulching the ground ; nor had they any shade or shelter from the 
winds. All the conditions of the expei-iments were such as the ordi- 
nary farmer may easily imitate. 

One object was to test the possibility of growing trees and other 
plants on the plains depending on the rainfall alone. It was deemed 
important to show that the settler in the open waste may adorn his 
home with trees ; may grow fruits and timber ; may raise grains and 
other vegetable food for his family and his live stock without resort 
to expensive processes of artificial watering. So far as we may judge 
from a single season, the object has been accomplished ; and it is 
not doubted that future years will sustain the promise of the past 
season. 

SETTLEMENTS ON THE PLAINS. 

Within the past two years settlers, in families and colonies, have 
spread westward, along the line of the Kansas Pacific Railway, and 
also on streams north and south of the road, nearly to the one hun- 
dredth meridian. The purpose is generally to grow and deal in cattle 
and other live stock, and this purpose will be greatly aided by the 
capability of the country to produce grains and other products of 
general agriculture. The first settlers keep near the streams, as a 
general rule, for the convenience of water ready at hand and the lim- 
ited supply of timber. If we look backward twenty-five years and 
reflect on the westward extension of settlements during that time, 
we must see that the causes which have pushed the " frontier " nearly 
three hundred miles west from the mouth of the Kansas River, are 



FOREST PLANTING. 123 

yet in active operation, aided by potent agencies not then in exist- 
ence. Then the locomotive was unknown west of the Mississippi ; 
now there are in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas thousands of 
miles of railroad. Then the entire population of the United States 
was only about twenty-one millions ; nozv it is over forty millions. It 
is safe to say that the forces operating to throw population westward, 
taking into consideration facilities of transportation, are three times 
as powerful as they were twenty-five years ago. The result will be a 
gradual spread of people over the great plains, arranging their pur- 
suits and modifying their habits to suit the capabilities of the country 
and the necessities of their respective localities. 

EFFECT ON CLIMATE. 

It is a bold assumption to say that the spread of settlements over 
the plains is to materially affect the climate. Yet it is not unreason- 
able to expect a degree of amelioration. Every house, every fence, 
every tree which civilized communities may in the future establish in 
those vast, open areas, will aid, in some measure, to check the sweep 
of the winds. Every acre broken by the plow will retain a greater 
amount of moisture after rains, and for a longer time, than the 
unbroken prairie. The genial rains of spring and summer will evap- 
orate with less rapidity, and there will be a greater degree of humid- 
ity in the atmosphere, heavier dews, and possibly more frequent 
showers. Even if the annual average of rainfall shall not be increased, 
the chances are that it will be moi-e evenly distributed. If we may 
judge by the experience of other parts of the world, where the 
destruction of forests has operated to dry up fountains, we may reason- 
ably expect that the breaking up of the surface by the plow, the 
covering of the earth with taller herbage, and the growth of trees, 
will all tend to the development of springs where now unknown, and 
to render streams perennial which are now intermittent. Thus the 
gradual spread of inhabitants over the plains will tend to enlarge 
their capabilities and to render them more habitable. 

Under date of June loth, 1872, Mr. Elliott writes me 
as follows :• 



124 FOREST PLANTING. 

''■ We have planted a variety of seeds and have up — at Wilson — 
butternuts, coffee bean, box elder, hickory, locust, honey-locust, osage- 
orange and black walnut. 

" At Ellis — the same except coffee bean — also, white ash is up. 

" At Pone Creek — Box elder, locust, honey-locust. 

"Ailantus is up at Pond Creek and Ellis — at each place, larch plant- 
ed this year looks well. Will succeed at Ellis. I have not been at 
Pond Creek for a month, and cannot report on it. 

" Transplanted ash, catalpa, box elder, honey-locust, silver-maple, 
black walnut and osage-orange do well at Pond Creek and at Ellis. 
Pines are doing well at each place, but better at Ellis and Wilson 
than at Pond Creek. At Ellis, last year's pines (Austrian and Scotch), 
have made shoots eight or nine inches long. 

" Corn, sorgum, millet, pumpkins, potatos, melons, pea-nuts, etc., 
etc., are all doing well at Wilson and Ellis ; rye at Pond Creek ; rye 
and wheat at Ellis ; corn was doing well at Pond Creek, my men say^ 
but was all pulled up by gophers or prairie dogs. 

" At Wilson, a variety of trees and shrubbery sent by Thos. Meehan, 
of Philadelphia, are doing well — spireas, altheas, forsythias, etc., also 
paulownia, mountain ash, hornbeam, judas tree, etc. 

" The experiments will go on this year, not in a large way, but suf- 
ficient to prove a great deal. The Railroad Company is only testing. 
but it is something to have even a small test going on. All who ex- 
amine the little fields are surprised. Other railroads are operating. 
The Atchison, Topeka & Sante Fe Railroad Company has made ar- 
rangements with S. T. Kelsey to plant part of a section every ten 
miles west of the 99th meridian. 

" You may safely say that tree culture on the plains is possible, 
without irrigation." 

It will be seen that Mr. Elliott's efforts have been di- 
rected to prove that the growing of trees is possible, even 
with the slight care they are likely to receive at the 
hands of the average pioneer settler. No irrigation was 
made use of, and no cultivation was applied after the 



FOREST PLANTING. 125 

trees were planted. The experiments were the more 
valuable on this account, as proving that it involved no 
extraordinary outlay of capital or labor. And it is the 
more encouraging from the evidence it affords that the 
careful culture which should be bestowed wherever the 
work of forest planting was systematically undertaken 
would be amply rewarded. 

The question naturally arises, by whom are these 
plantations to be made.-* The United States Govern- 
ment is obviously the party most largely interested, be- 
ing the largest proprietor, and the lands being at present 
almost valueless for want of timber, yet susceptible of 
attaining an enormous value within twenty or thirty 
years, by a judicious system of forest planting. A com- 
pany has recently been organized in Kansas, which com- 
prises the names of several very able and reliable men, 
who propose to cornmence and carry out an extended sys- 
tem of forest planting if they can get from Congress a 
grant of land sufficient to warrant the undertaking. They 
ask a grant of one section of land for every mile, from 
Fort Dodge, Kansas, to Pueblo, Colorado, — 270 miles — 
and propose to plant eighty acres of forest on every sec- 
tion, and to make an experimental station every few 
miles, for the purpose of testing every variety of tree 
that could be of any practical value to the country for 
fruit, ornament, fuel, timber or shelter. The wisdom of 
giving liberal encouragement to such enterprises is mani- 
fest, and at the outset it is essential that government aid 
should be extended. After the system is once fairly in- 
augurated "it will prove self-supporting and work its own 
extension. 



126 FOREST PLANTING. 

The following circular has been issued by the associa- 
tion, and comprises an interesting statement of the ne- 
cessity of the work and the means by which they propose 
to begin it : 

" The design of the association is to settle the great question so 
often asked, " What are these barren plains good for?'^ by investing 
capital, skill and labor, in the experiment on such a scale as will, if 
successful, increase the value of three hundred thousand square miles 
of territory, vastly more than the small franchise asked from the Gov- 
ernment is worth ; for in its present condition it is an unprofitable and 
unproductive area. Our association is duly incorporated under the 
laws of Kansas, and our board of directors are all men who have 
been closely identified with the subject of tree growing for years. 
Three of our directors. Dr. Warden, of Ohio, Robert Douglass, of 
Waukegan, Illinois, and Prof. S. T. Kelsey, of Pomona, Kansas, are 
men of eminent ability and experience in tree growing, and have a na- 
tional reputation as scientific horticulturists, having made this busi- 
ness a life study. 

" Prof. Kelsey has the immediate supervision of all the forest tree 
growing of the association, assisted by the experience and advice of 
Dr. Warden, of Ohio, and Mr. Douglass, of Illinois. Hon. Alfred 
Gray and J. K. Hudson, of Wyandotte county, Kansas, both of them 
members of the State Board of Agriculture, with Hon. W. H. Small- 
wood, Secretary of State, are directors in the association, and are all 
experienced horticulturists. The President of our association is Col, 
T. J. Peter, General Manager, of the A. T. & S. F. Railroad. Every 
member of this association is heartily in sympathy with the proposed 
enterprise, and if Congress will give us the encouragement asked for, 
we expect to make the solution of this question a leading one for the 
next five years. 

" We are now engaged in a series of experiments between Topeka 
and Fort Dodge, on the lands of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 
Railroad, and if Congress will grant us the aid asked for, we propose 
to continue our work across the plains, by investing capital, skill and 



FOREST PLANTING. 127 

energy in this enterprise, which will add directly and indirectly mill- 
ions of dollars to the value of our Government possessions in the 
West. These lands are at present worthless, and unless the 
requisite assistance is rendered to prove their capacity for agricul- 
tural developments, millions of acres of them must remain of no 

VALUE W^HATEVER. 

" Our association is composed of men who have faith in believing 
that their practical experience, coupled with their great interest and 
sympathy with this subject in all its bearings, can and will, (if en- 
couragement is given us,) give to these lands a value a thousand times 
more than the franchise asked for are worth to the General Govern- 
ment. 

" West of the Mississippi there is not a State that has a stick of 
timber more than is needed for its own consumption in our own 
generation. The Sierra gorges, and a large surface of Oregon have 
good supplies of timber, and some of the mountain ranges are well 
covered with trees, but no streams aj'e there, large enough to convey 
the logs or lumber to where it is needed, or can be made available. 
Five acres of good timber, selected and cultivated where it is need- 
ed, is of more value than five hundred acres away where it cannot be 
made available for our purpose. 

" The American forests, once the richest inheritance that Divine 
providence ever bestowed upon a people, have been swept away be- 
fore the onward march of civilization, to such an extent, that it has 
already become a question of serious import, ' Where shall the 
SUPPLY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS COME FROM ?' No rational answer 
can be given to this, other than to enter immediately upon the work 
of Forest Tree growing. This is imperatively necessary, both for 
protection in exposed situations, and for building and mechanical 
purposes. 

" With the present and prospective increase in the consumption of 
pine, all the accessible pine timber east of the Rocky Mountains will 
soon be exhausted. The Chicago market alone receives over one 
thousand millions of feet of lumber per annum, and say that this 
represents one-fourth of all the lumber that is taken from oui forests 



128 FOREST PLANTING. 

in one year, and you can plainly see that the aggregate will very soon 
cause the last " Requiem of the Pine Forest " to be sung, for in 
twenty years they will all have melted away. Individuals, States 
and Nation should awake to the fact that soon our whole forest sup- 
plies will have passed away. The only remedy is in a system of for- 
est growing, aided and encouraged by Government, and unless this is 
done, we will soon be co77ipelled to resort to importation. There is no 
place on the continent where the encouragement of a completely or- 
ganized system of tree planting, by men who thoroughly understand 
the business, and appreciate the great and growing necessity for the 
inauguration of these and kindred enterprises, will be of so great a 
national benefit as on the barren plains of the West. It would 
convert this vast desert into a well developed agricultural country 
more rapidly than anything the Government could do, and we believe 
the subject is one well worthy of the care and attention of Congress. 
" The Hon. J. M. Edmonds, the commissioner of the public lands, 
in his report to the House in answer to the enquiries of Hon. J. M. 
Donnelly, in regard to this question of forest tree growing, says under 
date of May 29, 1866: 

" ' The subject of inquiry is one of vast importance to the future of 
this country, a proper answer to which can only be made after exact 
knowledge shall be gained as to the best and surest means of promot- 
ing the purpose in view. 

" ' A large portion of the vast region between the Mississippi and 
Pacific is wholly destitute of timber, and this destitution is the great 
and principal hindrance to the RAPID ADVANCE OF SETTLEMENTS. 

" ' These vast treeless plains and plateaus will be rendered 

HABITABLE ONLY BY THE PRESENCE OF TREES AND GROVES, which wil] 

fertalize and moisten the soil, soften and modify the climate, and pro- 
tect men and animals from the blighting effects of dry and searching 
winds which now almost desolate that region. 

" ' It is a demonstrated fact that' POPULATION WILL NOT AND CAN- 
NOT ADVANCE FAR BEYOND THE PROTECTION AND ADVANTAGES OF 

GROVES AND FORESTS. In densely timbered sections, trees in the 



FOREST PLANTING. 129 

opening of the country are the great obstacles to improvement and 
cultivation, and are therefore destroyed, not only without mercy, but 
with zest and with utter disregard of the future. 

" ' Already the great forests of New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana 
and Ohio have been so far depleted that those States resort to Mich- 
igan and Wisconsin for lumber and timbers for domestic use. True, 
those States have yet much timber, but they have little or none of the 
most valuable kinds for export, and they have so well learned its value 
that they will purchase rather than use their own, preferring to hold it 
as an investment. 

" ' But how long will the forests of Michigan, Northern Wisconsin 
and Minnesota stand before the treble drain of the older Eastern 
States, the great prairies and the valley of the Mississippi ? Long be- 
fore Michigan, Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota, (the only States 
which can now export timber in large quantities,) shall contain a 
population one-half as dense as Massachusetts, they will not only 
cease to export, but will find a scarcity for their own local purposes. 

" • It should be borne in mind that to this time our great forests 
have met the demands and destruction of a gradually rising popula- 
tion from three to thirty-three millions of people, whilst they were for 
nearly the whole time diving deeper into the recesses of the unbroken 
primeval supply. We have now gone through and surrounded this 
great timber reserve, and we enter upon the margin of the great tree- 
less waste with our original store three-quarters consumed, the de- 
mand accelerated, and the consumers to rise rapidly from thirty-three 
to fifty millions within the last third of this century. A little com- 
mon arithmetic will satisfy any thinking man of the consequences, 
and of the proportion which the demand and supply will bear to each 
other at the close of as compared with the commencement of this 
century. Extend the time for another five years, with the added pop- 
ulation, and it will be fortunate if our people get boards three inches 
wide, as in China at the present time. Is it not apparent that we 
should at once cease to destroy and commence to produce ?' 

9 



I30 FOREST PLANTING. 

" Here we have the views of a gentleman who has given the subject 
much thought and attention, and his views should be received as com- 
ing from a source entitled to credit. 

" We ask the aid of the Government, because we look upon this 
work as being of National importance and this experiment on 
such a scale as to be of permanent value, requires the outlay of a 
large amount of capital, from which no return can be expected for 
years, and without the aid and encouragement of Congress, the amount 
of capital necessary to carry it forward cannot be enlisted. 

" We do not expect to raise forests to supply the necessities of the 
country, or to meet the demands of the future, but we propose to 
make such experiments, and on such a scale, as to show how it can be 
done, and publish the results of our successes and our failures to the 
whole country, so that all may be benefited by them. 

•• No ONE INDIVIDUAL CAN AFFORD EITHER THE LAND, THE LABOR 
OR THE NECESEARY EXPENDITURES OF MONEY TO MAKE THESE EX- 
PERIMENTS, and hundreds of men who are willing to plant forest 
trees on the plains, are waiting to profit by the experience and ex- 
penditures of others who must first point out the proper way and 
kinds to plant. When the experiments are properly made and the 
necessary information given, there will be plenty to imitate. Every 
tree grown by our association, or that by our example and influence 
may be grown, will be just where it is wanted, and where it will do 
the most good. Our association will not only be obliged to expend 
vastly more than what these lands are worth to carry on this enter- 
prise successfully, but will in addition have to expend a large portion 
of the lands also in order to get the necessary labor located where it 
will be available for our use, and what land we can save, and the 
growth of our trees, will be our reward for capital and labor expend- 
ed. If we are not successful in growing these trees, the Government 
loses nothing by the work we do. Almost any other expenditure, in 
any legitimate enterprise, will yield a speedy return — commerce, 
manufactures, crops or herbs — but iti the plantitig of trees it will be 
years before the profits for skilled labor and capital expended will 
show any return. No great and complete efforts have ever yet been made 



FOREST PLANTING. 131 

with a view to ascertain definitely what use can be made of this vast 
area of treeless lands. Some persons, it is true, have planted a few 
trees on the plains, but nothing scientific or systematic, designed to 
establish facts and principles in this direction, has ever yet been un- 
dertaken. 

" It is a well known fact that fay est trees exercise a grand influence 
(when they are present) over the climatology of the country, and con- 
trol to a great extent climatic extremes. They are beneficial to the 
agricultural interests around them. Rains are induced by them, 
springs are created in the thirsty land by their planting, and the cold 
blasts of winter are moderated by them. 

" '^ Is there an interest so great that is so much neglected — one so 
much needing attention as this ?' Government is liberal in its dona- 
tions in the interest of commerce, and as the full development of the 
agricultural interests of the land is the true basis of National wealth, 
our law makers should be equally liberal in fostering and protecting 
so vast an interest. ' Is there any better way to encourage a measnre 
of National importance than by aiding an enterprise that will develop 
so great an interest, as the one proposed in this bill ?' 

Yours most respectfully, 
E. S. NICCOLLS, 

Secretary Western Forest Tree and Hedge Growing As., of Kansas.** 

Next to the National Government, the parties most 
interested in the work are the various railroad companies 
whose lines intersect the region, and whose extended 
territorial possessions would be vastly increased in value 
by the establishment of an extended and wisely managed 
system of forest planting. The advantages they would 
thus secure, have already suggested themselves to the 
directors, and the subject has been more or less agitated 
for two or three years past, but I have not yet heard of 
any decisive action on the part of either of the great 



132 FOREST PLANTING. 

companies. The Kansas Pacific led off by the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Elliot as Industrial Agent, and the estab- 
lishment of experimental nurseries; but after proving 
the possibility of growing trees as far west as Pond 
Creek, 400 miles west of Kansas City, they have left it 
to others to profit, if they will, by their labors, but have 
failed to turn the knowledge thus acquired to their own 
benefit. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad 
has made an important move in the right direction by a 
liberal arrangement with Mr. S. T. Kelsey, one of the 
most experienced and reliable tree planters of the West, 
who is to plant a certain portion of each of twenty-eight 
sections of land, situated ten miles apart on the line of 
the road. The trees are to receive what attention they 
require till they attain such age and size as to need no 
further care — the object being to demonstrate the possi- 
bility and the profits of forest culture, as an encourage- 
ment to settlers. The Burlington & Missouri River 
Railroad has had a good deal of discussion of the 
subject of forest planting on the line of the extension of 
the road from Plattsmouth to Fort Kearney, along the 
whole of which route, tree culture, I am confident, would 
be perfectly easy; but no definite results have followed. 
If the Union Pacific has taken any steps in the matter I 
have heard nothing of it, and the Northern Pacific, I am 
informed, " has not done much in the way of planting 
trees, except commencing the work along the line for 
wind-screens and snow-breaks." 

The work is of a novel character, involving very con- 
siderable outlay, and promising no immediate return. It 



FOREST PLANTING. .133 

is also extraneous to the usual customary works incident 
to railroad direction, and has therefore an apparently 
speculative character which directors are unwilling to 
assume. 

The Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad 
Company, under the direction of its wise Superintendent, 
O. Chanute, Esq., has instituted a system for the purpose 
of encouraging settlers along its line, in planting hedges, 
which is well worthy the consideration of many other 
roads. 

The nature of this system may be best explained by 
the following circular, which is sent to every land pro- 
prietor along the line of the road : 

Superintendent's Office L., L. & G. R. R., ) 
Lawrence, Kansas, November 8, 187 1. \ 

The killing and injuring of stock by trains, proving not only a 
great loss and annoyance to farmers along the line, but a source of 
considerable danger to the trains and the traveling public, the 
Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad Company is desirous 
of beginning the fencing of its line in advance of any legal require- 
ment to do so, and for this purpose makes the following proposal to 
the proprietors of the land adjoining its right of way : 

1. The railroad company will, upon application, furnish at the 
nearest station, during the proper season for planting, osage orange 
plants in sufficient quantities to set out a hedge on the right of way 
lines through each cultivated farm, and will, when the hedge is grown 
and in condition to turn stock, as ascertained by actual examination 
of a skilled inspector, pay the proprietor, or his assigns, the sum of 
thirty-five cents a rod. 

2. The railroad company will, about the time the hedge is ready to 
turn out to stock, fence up at its own expense such short gaps as must 
be necessarily, left where there is no soil to grow a hedge, and will 



134 FOREST PLANTING. 

connect the same with the bridges, cattle passes and cattle guards. 

3. The company will, upon application, put in such new cattle 
guards as may be required to enable the farmers to protect the grow- 
ing hedges by cross fences or other field enclosures ; the necessity to 
be determined by the company. 

4. The proprietor or tenant of the land shall prepare the same for 
setting out the hedge, and the plants will not be furnished until the 
inspector has examined it and reported it to be in good condition. 

5. All setting out, protecting, cultivation and care of the hedge 
shall be performed by the proprietor or tenant, and the above men- 
tioned payment of thirty-five cents per rod. shall only be made when 
it is a continuous efficient hedge, capable of turning stock of all 
kinds, save at those points where there is no soil, as above provided. 
The intent of this proposition being to throw the whole care of the 
growing hedge upon the farmer, and to make it to his interest to do 
the work well. 

6. In order to prevent the entire failure of any piece of hedge once 
started, the company reserves the right of taking charge of any por- 
tion of the same which may be abandoned or improperly taken care 
of by the farmer. In which case he shall be entitled to no compen- 
sation for setting out or cultivating the same ; but the company shall 
only be entitled to take possession of the same after three disinter- 
ested fence viewers, selected from among neighboring farmers, shall 
have decided that the hedge is not receiving proper attention. 

7. As experienced hedge growers in this State estimate the whole 
cost of preparing the ground, setting out and raising a hedge, the 
plants being furnished, at from twenty to twenty-five cents per rod, 
it is hoped that the higher price here offered will induce proprietors 
to enclose and cultivate the land near the railroad, so as to avail 
themselves of this proposal. 

8. Any benefits or bounties provided by the laws of the State for 
growing hedges will be relinquished by the company to the farmers. 

9. Forms of contracts, made assignable upon the sale or transfer of 
the land, have been prepared, embodying the above conditions, and 
will be filled out upon application being made in writing upon the 



FOREST PLANTING. 135 



form herewith. Blanks may be obtained from the section foreman, or 
from the station agents. 

10. As 'it is very desirable that the company should know at an 
early day how many plants to provide for next spring, the farmers 
who may wish to avail themselves of this offer are earnestly desired 
to fill out and forward their applications without delay. Make out a 
separate application for each piece of land, even if owned by the 
same party, so as to avoid the making out of new contracts, should 
you hereafter sell a portion of your land. 

The company will not be bound to recognize any application made 
subsequently to the first day of March, 1872. 

O. Chanute, Superintendent. 

With the circular the farmer is also provided with a 
printed blank for him to fill, stating the location of his 
land, how many rods of hedge will be required on each 
side of the railroad, and how much of it he will have in 
readiness for planting the ensuing season. This is 
accompanied by a printed envelope, directed to the 
superintendent, labelled "Application for Hedging," in 
which the blank form, after being filled, may be enclosed 
and left at the nearest railroad station, to be forwarded 
to the superintendent's office. A form of contract is then 
sent to him to be signed, binding him and the company 
to the mutual performance of the duties set forth in the 
circular, and at the proper season the requisite number 
of hedge plants are forwarded. This method of relieving 
the farmers so far as possible of labor and inconvenience 
in making the application, has no doubt tended greatly 
to promote the success of the work; and I am informed 
by Mr. Chajiute that the farmers respond to the call with 



136 FOREST PLANTING. 

hearty interest, and applications were received during the 
winter, and have been since filled, for more than sixty 
miles of hedging. 

Without going deeply into estimates, whose results 
would be dependant upon many contingencies, it is not 
difficult to prove by very simple calculations that the future 
interests of every road which crosses the plains are so 
intimately connected with the work of tree planting that 
it cannot afford to forego the advantages it offers. As I 
selected the item of ties as the simplest article with which 
to illustrate the amount of timber consumed, let us again 
make use of it as a basis of calculation of possible results. 

Seedling larch trees of two years growth can be had at 
the nurseries for $5 per 1,000. If set in nursery rows, 
the plants being a foot apart, and three feet between the 
rows to allow room for culture with a horse-hoe, an acre 
would contain about 14,500 plants. From year to year 
the alternate plants, and after a time the alternate rows, 
should be transplanted, till an average of 400 trees to an 
acre was attained, when the original occupants of the 
single acre would cover about forty-three acres. In fifteen 
years from the time of first planting every tree would fur- 
nish, at least, one tie. Supposing every alternate tree to 
be then cut we should have 7,250 ties. Five years later 
every remaining tree would furnish two ties (14,500), 
making in all 21,750 ties in twenty years from time of 
planting. 

The following is an estimate of the cost : 
Original cost of 14,500 plants at $5 per 1,000 $ 72 00 



FOREST PLANTING. 137 

Culture for six years (after which they may be left to them- 
selves), say $100 per annum _ 600 00 

672 50 
Interest on the above for twenty years at 10 per cent _ 1,345 00 

Total cost of 21,750 ties - $2,017 50 

This makes the cost of the ties less than ten cents each, 
but it will be observed that I have not included the cost 
of cutting and hewing, or sawing them out. I believe that 
if the work were undertaken in the comprehensive and 
liberal manner which the truest economy would dictate, 
the proportionate cost of all the items of culture would 
be reduced to such a degree, and might be so relieved by 
sales of crops grown in the intermediate spaces that the 
cost of the ties need not be more than the sum I have 
stated. Hickory and oak saplings are fit for hoop poles 
at six or eight years, and cedar, larch, spruce and fir are 
valuable for fencing stuff at eight or ten years. These 
should be planted liberally with those which are to remain 
longer, and their sale would materially diminish the costs. 
But suppose that no such aid were received, and we allow 
the cost of cutting and hewing to be twenty cents for each 
tie, the sum would then be thirty cents each, which is less 
than half their present price, which certainly cannot 
diminish unless some new invention supersedes them. 

I am very confident that by judicious management their 
final cost might be reduced to a less sum than my esti- 
mate, if not entirely cancelled. An expenditure of thous- 
ands now may save a future imperative necessity for the 



138 FOREST PLANTING. 

outlay of millions. But of course such a work requires 
the exercise of thoughtful care and judicious management. 
A general superintendent should be appointed who 
should unite the characteristics of a thorough man of 
business and a competent nurserymen. His first work 
should be the selection of a position for the primary nur- 
sery, which should be fully appointed with all necessary 
buildings, teams, wagons, tools and implements for thor- 
ough and extensive nursery culture. The whole work of 
propagation from seed or cuttings should be performed 
here, and from this point the secondary nurseries, which 
should be established at every station along the line of 
the road, should receive their supplies of young trees. 
These secondary nurseries could be managed by intelli- 
gent laborers accustomed to such work, and would, of 
course, be under the supervision of the superintendent, 
who should visit them as often as necessary and direct 
their general management. It should be a special object, 
at the earhest possible moment, to render the stations 
attractive by tasteful plantation of trees and shrubbery in 
their vicinity, by which I mean not merely planting a few 
trees and shrubs in a yard adjoining the station, but 
a tasteful disposition of gioves and groups on conspicu- 
ous surrounding points and hillsides. The effect upon 
the mind of travellers, of such an oasis in the desert, is 
cheering and refreshing beyond conception, and in no 
way could the capacity of the country for tree culture be 
so successfully demonstrated. Every station thus adorned, 
with its nursery adjacent, would become the nucleus of a 
settlement ; the opportunity of providing themselves on 



FOREST PLANTING. 139 

the spot with trees, being in itself a strong attraction to 
settlers. If the mode of supplying them, and the condi- 
tions which should be insisted upon to insure proper 
planting and culture I shall speak hereafter, but before 
approaching that subject I wish to say a few words on the 
mode of planting which should be adopted. 

Mr. Elliott's experiments afford valuable suggestions 
as to the kinds of trees which are likely to prove most 
hardy, and which should therefore be most liberally used 
as screens on the sides which most need shelter. Some 
of these varieties would not be available so far north as 
the line of the Northern Pacific, but I think the ailantus, 
Cottonwood, box elder, (negundo,) and white ash would 
prove as reliable as in Kansas, and should therefore be 
liberally used at the outset for screens. They should oc- 
cupy the summits of ridges and prairie swells, and the 
more tender varieties should be planted on the northern 
and eastern slopes. This arrangement may surprise 
those who are not familiar with the subject, whose first 
impression would be that a warm southern slope should 
be selected for such purpose, but I feel warranted in the 
assertion by long experience and observation of facts. 
The prevailing wind all over the country, which blows 
with the greatest violence and with the longest duration 
is from the S. W. — and it is the wind whose parching in- 
fluence is most detrimental to vegetation. I have been 
surprised to find what a comparatively small number of 
persons have observed, (till their attention has been 
called to it), the scriking evidence of this truth, which is 
afforded by the attitudes of trees in exposed situations — 



•I40 FOREST PLANTING, 

leaning, or with a decided tend of the branches and spray 
toward the northwest. From Maine to Colorado, and 
from Minnesota to' Texas, one need never be long at a 
loss for the points of the compass, who has learned to 
observe this effect, which after a little experience becomes 
so familiar that he detects it intuitively. 

Sometimes every tree, for a large space, will have a de- 
cided lean — sometimes individual trees only exhibit the 
effect — and sometimes the branches are compressed to- 
ward the trunk, on the windward side, and spread away 
from it on the other, while the trunk itself is not affected. 
The explanation is simply that the season at which the 
S. W. winds prevail with greatest frequency and violence, 
is during the spring and early summer, when the tree is 
full of sap, and the young shoots are easily bent, and 
have not yet attained sufficient elasticity to recover their 
natural position. During many years that I was largely 
engaged in fruit growing in New Jersey, I learned to 
dread this wind as the worst enemy of my crops, and the 
one whose attacks were especially to be guarded against. 
Further observation since has served to prove that the 
influence of these winds is much more widely extended 
than I at that time imagined, and a very important fact in 
regard to the modification of their effects, by passing over 
large bodies of wood or water does not seem to me to have 
received the attention it merits. Wherever the S. W. wind 
strikes upon the land after passing over a large body of 
water it tends to ameliorate the climate as compared with 
that of places in the same parallel of latitude with a dif- 
ferent aspect towards the water. On a large scale this 



FOREST PLANTING. 141 

may be seen by comparison of the East and West coasts 
of Continents. Europe receives the S. W. winds from 
the Altantic, and we find the vine and olive growing in 
the latitude of Boston, which is that of central Spain and 
Italy. Follow the same parallel to our Western coast 
and we find in California growing luxuriantly the fruits 
which in Boston can only be raised under glass, and with 
artificial heat. 

The same effect, in a less degree, may be observed when 
the expanse of water is very much less. At Newport, R. 
I., as is well known, many plants are found to flourish, 
"which in the interior cannot be grown north of Philadel- 
phia. In Nova Scotia (which, like Rhode Island, receives 
the S. W. wind directly from the ocean), the English ivy 
thrives without protection, which in Boston — two degrees 
farther south — is annually killed to the ground. It is 
common to attribute this to the influence of the gulf stream, 
but the same result is found on the shores of the great lakes. 
The whole eastern shore of Lake Michigan, from St. Jo- 
seph to the Grand Traverse region, is the land of the 
peach and the grape, and of a luxuriant forest vegetation. 
The S. W. wind has a sweep of sixty miles across the 
laKe before striking the shore, and the result is that for 
all purposes of cultivation the country is the same as the 
region about Philadelphia, while the whole western shore 
from Chicago northward, is utterly incapable of produc- 
ing the more delicate fruits, and the native forests are 
comparatively confined to a limited number of varieties, 
and those of stunted growth. The influence of wood land 
upon temperature is of the same character as that of a 



142 FOREST PLANTING. 

body of water, and so far as opportunity has favored ob- 
servation, its benefits are conferred under similar relative 
conditions. The parching effect of these winds sweeping 
unobstructed over the vast extent of the plains, after be- 
ing robbed of what moisture they might previously have 
contained, in their passage across the mountains, is suf- 
ficient to account for the lack of vegetation, and wherever 
the attempt is made to restore the soil to a cultivable 
condition, the first step should be to counteract their 
blighting influence. The ridges and uplands should 
therefore be planted with such varieties of trees as are 
found most hardy and least affected, and the Northern 
and Eastern slopes thus protected, might then be planted 
with those requiring shelter, with great certainty of suc- 
cessful results. If the slopes were roughly terraced, as 
they might be, with a plow, at no great cost, the object 
would be greatly promoted, by the more permanent re- 
tention of the moisture from rainfalls. As an additional 
aid to this end, wherever possible a thorough system of 
mulching should be adopted. Few persons, even among 
the practical horticulturists, are aware of the value of 
this process, when properly performed. I have seen 
it practised extensively on coffee plantations in Cuba, and 
have myself applied it to vineyards and pear orchards in 
New Jersey, with surprising results. But what I mean is 
a very different process from simply mulching around each 
tree in a circle equal to the extent of the branches. The 
whole ground must be covered, to a depth sufficient to 
prevent the growth of weeds and grass, to supersede the 
necessity of cultivation between the rows, and to retain 



FOREST PLANTING. I43 



the moisture of the rainfalls for a great length of time, 
preventing the heating and baking of the earth, and ef- 
fecting the same object which in the natural forest is se- 
cured by the annual fall of the leaves. No one who has 
not witnessed the effect can realise the amazing difference 
in the health and vigorous growth of trees thus treated, 
in comparison with those where the ground is left bare. 
Wherever it is possible to procure material for the pur- 
pose, it should be applied. Doubtless a great deal might 
be procured in the sloughs and swales of the prairies by- 
mowing the rank grass and rushes which grow in such 
places, and with railroad transportation at command, it 
would not be difficult to procure very large annual sup- 
plies from swampy tracts wherever they occurred along 
the line, and deliver them at the stations where they were 
wanted. An experienced Cincinnati grape grower told 
me some twenty years since, on seeing the effect of such 
an application to my vineyards, in New Jersey, that he 
was richly paid for his journey by what he had learned of 
the value of the operation. 

The primary nursery should be devoted exclusively to 
propagation and experimental cultivation. The second- 
ary nurseries should receive annually from the primary a 
stock of young trees, not over three years old from the 
seed, sufficient to keep up their supply to a fixed stand- 
ard to be determined by the demands upon them, which 
would be constantly increasing. These trees should 
remain at least one year in the secondary nursery before 
being sold to settlers or removed to the point where they 
v;ere permaiiently to remain. I shall speak presently of 



144 FOREST PLANTING. 

the supplies for settlers, which will require a very large 
quantity. But beside those, there should be annually 
planted a certain proportion of the land owned by the 
railroad company, on each side of the line. Of course it 
is desirable that this should be as large as possible, pro- 
vided the planting and culture is properly attended to. 
The work should be extended from year to year and 
from section to section of the lands belonging to the 
company. The planting should be systematically done. 
A portion of every section should be reserved for the 
express purpose of growing timber for future use by the 
railroad itself. This would naturally be on the side 
nearest to the railroad. On the rest of the tract the 
plantations should not be continuous, but in groves, 
selecting as far as possible the northern slopes and sum- 
mits of ridges, and leaving the southern slopes for cult^ 
ivation. 

The effect of scattered groves as shelters and wind- 
screens would be much greater than that of continuous 
wood, while it would be much more attractive to pur- 
chasers, since it would make a more convenient arrange- 
ment of tillage and wood land, reserving the most 
desirable portions for the former purpose. The details 
of arrangement of the plantations would of course be 
directed by the superintendent, who it is to be presumed 
would be thoroughly acquainted with the work. A 
moment's reflection will show that there is great room 
for the exercise of judgment in adapting varieties to con- 
ditions of soil, and in making such disposition of them 
as to secure returns at the earliest possible moment. 



FOREST PLANTING. 145 

For instance, it would be very desirable to make large 
plantations of white pine, for future supplies of timber. 
But the white pine is of no value in its youth, in fact is 
hardly worth cutting till it is forty or fifty years old, and 
does not come to maturity till seventy-five, and in order 
to get the best timber the trees should be ten or fifteen 
feet apart. But this of course is unnecessary during 
their early years, and the intermediate space may be 
filled with hickory, oak, ash, cedar, spruce and larch, 
which may be removed and sold for hoop-poles, fencing, 
posts and railroad ties, at different periods from six to 
twenty years of age, by which time the pines would have 
attained a size sufficient to require all the ground, while 
the previous thinnings would have yielded an income 
sufficient to pay a handsome interest on the value of the 
land for the time when it otherwise would have yielded 
no return. 

The above general process of extending the forest 
plantations should be going on from year to year in the 
vicinity of every station, and for lands thus planted a 
proportionately higher price should be demanded. 

In addition to these plantations made by the railroad 
itself on its own lands before offering them for sale, a 
system should be adopted for furnishing every settler 
with a certain number of trees, proportionate to the 
amount of land purchased by him of the company. 
These should comprise an assortment of fruit and forest 
trees and shrubs, and should be put at the lowest price 
at which they could be afforded. They would add but 
slightly to t^e price per acre in the purchase of a quarter 



146 FOREST PLANTING. 

section, and it would doubtless prove an attractive feat- 
ure in the advertisements of the company's lands if 
emigrants were informed that fruit and ornamental trees 
enough to stock the farm would be included in the pur- 
chase at so much an acre. 

Of course the nursery would be open to all customers, 
but no one could complain at the preference shown to 
purchasers of railroad lands. 

It is not improbable that professional nurserymen 
might be found who would be glad to contract with the 
company to take charge of the whole work, the railroad 
furnishing land for the primary nursery, and facilities of 
transportation ; and the nurseryman furnishing stock and 
agreeing to plant a certain amount of forest annually and 
attend to its culture, and also to supply to every settler a 
certain amount of fruit and forest trees, proportionate to 
the amount of his land, to be paid for by the company. 
This method might on some account be deemed prefer- 
able, but I do not think the results would be likely to be 
as satisfactory as the other, though the point of vital 
importance is the personal character and capacity of the 
one in charge. If he is an honest man of efficient execu- 
tive ability, and familiar with the practical requirements 
of the work, it will be likely to be well done, whether he 
takes it on contract or as an employed superintendent. 
The work is so vast and involves so much which must be 
learned by experiment, that it is hardly possible that any 
one can escape errors, and it is all important that the 
unavoidable difficulties should not be complicated by 
inefficient management and false economy. If the work 



FOREST PLANTING. 147 

is undertaken carelessly, without the preparation of a 
general system and organization, it may accomplish 
nothing beyond the expenditure of a large amount of 
money with no satisfactory results. If, on the contrary, 
it is begun and prosecuted in a wise and liberal spirit — 
proceeding cautiously in cases of doubt, and with all the 
energy of abundant force when doubt is removed — there 
need be no apprehension that the result will not be com- 
mensurate with the magnitude and grandeur of the work, 
v/hether considered merely as a pecuniary investment for 
the benefit of the stockholders, or as a national benefit 
by the conversion of an uninhabitable desert into a 
region of agricultural wealth capable of supporting a 
dense population. Whether as a means of attracting 
settlers and adding to the value of their lands, or of 
providing timber for their own future wants, and the 
demands of roads which in time will certainly intersect 
the country in every direction, it is obvious that to forego 
the advantages which may thus be secured, is indicative 
of a "penny wise and pound foolish" policy which is 
inconsistent with the energy and enterprise which resulted 
in the construction of the trans-continental railroads. 









^r- 'VU ■:<:'! '^■' ^:.'X^'^ :'■:: :r' o''^ .' ■■ • 






■Si! 



m^Mf^mM^i 






N^:-^n.^;-v:S»r-^^iv-'^^'^ 






- .•;■■■»'. 







^fP'^J:i^ 



'''^''tX' '**-•'''■ 



:;^*'^ 

















